Walkthrough

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The following steps are covered in this walkthrough:

Creating a new profile

Custard stores all the desktop settings in profiles. Each profile is effectively a user account, which you log in to and set it up as desired. Custard monitors the changes you make and saves them, so that these same changes can be applied to other user accounts to set them up the exact same way as in the profile.

1. From the main screen, select Desktop Profiles by double clicking on it.

2. Click Create Profile

3. Enter a profile name and description in the first step of the wizard. Important: The profile name cannot contain any spaces or symbols, only alphanumberic characters.

4. Click Next

5. A session needs to be created which you can log in to and make the desired changes. Click Create session.

6. If all goes well, the next button will become active. Click Start Gnome in nested X server to log in to the newly create session and edit the settings to be stored in the profile.

Help! If nothing happens at this point, or you get an error message, it is likely that the nested X server (Xnest) could not start. If you recieve an error about a lock file existing, then you can try to remove the lock file using the tool under the Troubleshooting section of Custard's interface. Otherwise, make your that your X server is set up and configured correctly to allow the nested X server to start. You may need to issue the command 'xhost +' (sans quotes) to allow this.

7. After a few seconds a window with a newly created Gnome session, containing your distro's default settings, will appear. You may now make the desired changes. Remember that whatever you change, the same change will be applied to other user accounts you map to this profile.

8. Once you are finished, log out of the Gnome session and close the Xnest window. Failure to log out properly before closing the window *may* result in the lock file issue mentioned above.

9. Click Next and finish the wizard. You will notice that the newly create profile will appear in the main interface.

Adding users to the profile

For the changes you made in the profile to take effect, you must map them to a user. You can add as many users as you like to each profile, as long as they don't appear in more than 1 profile at any time.

1. Select User Mappings from the main screen

2. Click to select the profile in the left hand column that you want to add the users to.

3. Now click on the Add users to profile button.

4. You will now be presented with a window in which you can add a list of user accounts to add to the profile. These are UNIX usernames that must be entered one per line, i.e. each on its own line. You can automatically add to the list the users in a UNIX group by typing the group name in the lower box and clicking load.

Note! If there are any duplicates in the list, they will only be entered once. Blank lines will also be ignored.

5. Click Add Users. The users should now appear back in the main interface.

Saving changes

Even though you have mapped the users to the profile, you must now propagate the changes that were made in the profile to each user's home directory and configuration files.

1. Open User Mappings

2. Select the profile

3. Click Save and apply

A script will now be run to perform the task. It will be run in a window so you can monitor its progress. Depending on the amount of users and configuration data, this could take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes.

Remember that profile changes never automatically propagate back to the users that are mapped to the profile. You will be prompted to do this after editing the profile, or you can do it manually using the Save and apply button.