Xfce Forum

rubenv

Member

Registered: 2018-01-31

Posts: 2

Centrally manage settings, how?

Greetings,

I manage a few server shared by many users via Thinlinc (remote desktop solution).

The default DE for our setup is XFCE, and default graphical file manager is Thunar.

I would like to configure Thunar to *never* show thumbnails, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how.

For myself, I can execute

    xfconf-query -c thunar -p /misc-thumbnail-mode -s THUNAR_THUMBNAIL_MODE_ALWAYS

which works (instantly) in my own session, but it doesn't affect anyone else.

Searching around seems to indicate that I could put a thunar.xml in /etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml, containing

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   
    <channel name="thunar" version="1.0">
      <property name="misc-thumbnail-mode" type="string" value="THUNAR_THUMBNAIL_MODE_NEVER" unlocked=""/>
    </channel>

... or some variant of this, but this has no effect.

Any tips for me?

Thanks,
Ruben

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Centrally manage settings, how?

Hello and welcome.

A couple of points to clarify things:

1. xfconf-query only affects the settings of the current user.

2. The files and settings in /etc/xdg/xfce4/ are used only to populate the first use profile of a new user.

If you want to change that setting on everyone's account, you can:

For new users: make the change in the /etc/xdg/xfce4 skeleton files before they first log on (also make sure you edit the right files. Xubuntu, for example, has their initial default settings in /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu)

For existing users: you'll need to run the xfconf-query command under each user's profile. Since you are managing a number of users, you might want to consider adding a special shell script in everyone's autostart folder that runs any number of admin-type events including the running of the xfconf-query command. Since it is run by the user's autostart, it will run in the user's profile. To make this somewhat secure and permanent (so user's can't delete it), put the script in /usr/local/bin and the autostart desktop file in the proper /etc/xdg/[...]/autostart folder.

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alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: Centrally manage settings, how?

+1 Very informative, thanks!

rubenv

Member

Registered: 2018-01-31

Posts: 2

Re: Centrally manage settings, how?

@ToZ, brilliant - thanks a bunch!

Cheers,
Ruben