I've automated my Ubuntu installation - I've got Python code that runs automatically (after a clean install, but before the first user login - it's in a temporary /etc/init.d/ script) that sets up everything from Apache & its configuration to my personal Gnome preferences. It's the latter that's giving me trouble.
This worked fine in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy), but when I use this with 8.10 (Intrepid), the first time I try to access gconf, I get this exception:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Not running within active session)
Yes, right, there's no Gnome session when this is running, because the user hasn't logged in yet - however, this worked before; this appears to be new with Intrepid's Gnome (2.24?).
Short of modifying the gconf's XML files directly, is there a way to make some sort of proxy Gnome session? Or, any other suggestions?
(More details: this is python code that runs as root, but setuid's & setgid's to be me before setting my preferences using the "gconf" module from the python-gconf package.)