Re: [Tails-dev] [Tails-support] Saving gnome preferences

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Author: intrigeri
Date:  
To: Marc SCHNEIDER, User support for Tails, tails-dev
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] [Tails-support] Saving gnome preferences
Hi Marc,

Marc SCHNEIDER wrote (19 Mar 2015 09:31:19 GMT) :
> May be this is just not possible yet?


Indeed, that's not supported yet.

> If not, how could I help?


[It'll become technical, so I'm redirecting the discussion to -dev@.
Please drop -support@ from the recipients list when replying.]

I think the best to do it is to:

 1. Allow persisting a directory that can host dconf config files; the
    format of those files will the same as what we have in the main
    Tails Git repo already, in that file:
    config/chroot_local-includes/etc/dconf/db/local.d/00_Tails_defaults
 2. In our PostLogin file (that lives in the Greeter Git repo), load
    these persisted files (if any), and then call `dconf update'.


So users can selectively add the dconf bits they want to persist to
plaintext files.

Alternatively:

 1. Allow users to specify what dconf *keys* they want to persist, in
    some plaintext file
 2. On shutdown, save the value of those dconf keys somewhere on the
    persistent volume.
 3. In PostLogin, restore the value of those dconf keys.


=> which would be a bit nicer to the user.

I don't think that persisting the entire dconf database is a good
idea: it would permanently override default settings that we may
update later on for security or functionality. So unfortunately, I see
no easy way to add a graphical UI on top of my previous solution(s).

Maybe Alan will have a better idea?

> Is there a dedicated task for this in the bug tracker?


I believe the closest we have is
https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/8846. A general solution like the
ones I'm proposing above would solve that frequent user request (and
probably others too).

Cheers,
--
intrigeri