What I'd like to do to ensure that users get a uniform and 'non-broken' desktop environment when they log in is to copy enough stuff into their home directory at login to ensure their desktop, menus, panel etc are what we would like them to be. Sadly, this seems to be a little more complicated than just copying in a set of files from a 'golden' user's home directory as many of the config files (e.g. konquerors file management profile) have hard wired paths to the 'golden' user's home directory. Another problem we have is that
You could try setting up a template user with "~" subsituted for the user. This will work some of the time. Alternativily you can generate the files fron a shell script using environment variables such as $USER, which works well with the preferences.js file in the older versions of Netscape. (Which needs variations on the username and home directory in multiple places.) The newer versions of Netscape appear to use ~/.mozilla/$USER/$OUTPUT_OF_SOME_HASH_FUNCTION to store their config data (Galeon manages with ~/.galeon/mozilla/galeon
even if we copy across the OpenOffice directory from a user who has already run through the open office network workstation installation, the first time the new user runs an open office component, they have to go through the setup process.
Star/Open office is a big pain. Even with ~/<version>/user/sofficerc set up to contain the correct user details things you still get this. I think Michael Brown may know a solution. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763