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How to Centralize KDE 3.3 Menu for 100 Workstations RHWS 4U7

Folks

Is there a easy way to centralize the KDE 3.3 menu for RedHat 4U7

What I would like to do is to allow one user as say user kdemgr
to login and Right Click Menu Editor then Add / Delete any kde menu
After saving the changes any other user who logins to any workstation will see the same Menu.

Can any body advise.

Matthew

I once faced a similar issue. I wanted to enforce certain enviornment settings like background and initial app settings. I ended up so frustrated with trying to parse kde config files I tried out gnome. Honestly I never liked gnome before but using gconf with python bindings was so nice I became a fan for large user enviornments.

But to satisfy your requirement I have an idea. You could use Pam mount to mount your kdeuser dir. The use Pam mount and an overlay file system like unionfs to overlay the user on top of the customized kdeuser home dir.

That unionfs idea is pretty neat. I know that there's also some kiosk stuff for kde though never tried it myself. It might worth a short to try both ideas in conjunction, assuming that the kiosk kde stuff is mature and works, which I don't know.

http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kiosktool/

I've added a new sub menu on the KDE 3.5 menu before by creating the file /etc/xdg/menus/custom.menu E.g.

Code:

<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN" "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/1.0/menu.dtd">

<Menu>

 <Menu>

  <Name>Blah</Name>

  <Directory>Blah.directory</Directory>

  <Include>

  <Category>Blah</Category>

  </Include>

  <Layout>

  <Merge type="menus" />

  <Menuname>Applications</Menuname>

  <Merge type="files" />

  <Filename>quota.desktop</Filename>

  <Filename>changepassword.desktop</Filename>

  <Filename>linuxdocfaq.desktop</Filename>

  <Filename>thunderbirdsetup.desktop</Filename>

  </Layout>

  <Menu>

  <Name>Applications</Name>

  <Directory>Blah-applications.directory</Directory>

  <Include>

  <Category>Blah-Applications</Category>

  </Include>

  <Layout>

    <Merge type="all" />

    <Menuname>Foo</Menuname>

    <Menuname>Baa</Menuname>

  </Layout>

  <Menu>

    <Name>Foo</Name>

    <Directory>Blah-foo.directory</Directory>

    <Include>

    <Category>Blah-foo</Category>

    </Include>

  </Menu>

  <Menu>

    <Name>Baa</Name>

    <Directory>Blah-baa.directory</Directory>

    <Include>

    <Category>Blah-baa</Category>

    </Include>

  </Menu>

  </Menu>

 </Menu>

</Menu>

For examples of .directory and .desktop files look in /usr/share/applications.

Don't know if that would work for (so very, very old and obsolete) 3.3, try it and see.

For 3.5 at least then if you put the right files in the right place you can modify the KDE menu. I don't have a copy of KDE 3 anywhere to play and be more specific but the a technique for working out stuff like this is as follows:

In your home directory run the command

Code:

$ touch /tmp/now

Change the configuration you're interest in, in this case edit the KDE menu as desired. Then in your home directory run the command

Code:

$ find . -newer /tmp/now

You'll get a list of any files which have been changed since the file now was created. Often there will be system level equivalent of those files which can modify to apply the settings for all users.

It will of course help a lot if you have some automated way to put files on to all the workstations. I build my own rpms for this.

Folks

Thanks for all the replies

In the end I have done the following.

Created a User account kdemenu
Created links from each users account to the kdemenu account for the following.

~/.config /export/home/kdemenu/.config
~/.local /export/home/kdemenu/.local

I then login to kdemenu from a workstation do the edits via Menu Editor
and all the users can then share the kde menu.

The only problem I found is that you have to watch the permisions for
~/.local which seem to get changed after each edit and have to be altered , but it works for me.

Matthew