[KDE-India] Workaround: /etc/kde3 overriding profile configs

[subbukk]

On Thursday 21 December 2006 00:03, USM Bish wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 02:01:52PM +0530, subbukk wrote:
> > I found a kludgy workaround for Debian/Kubuntu KDE 3.5.x bug
> > that causes  config settings in /etc/kde3  to override those
> > in profiles.
>
> What are  the implications of  the change in config settings ?
It wont affect those who dont use profiles.
> Since the default developer tarball, compiled from source does
> not  have this,
> there  may  be certain  changes  done by  the 
> Kubuntu  developers, for  reasons  otherwise not  known to  us
> readily. But  then, Kubuntu surely  works. What is  the actual
> functional problem with this change ?
There are two defects that compound the problem. Firstly, KDE puts 
user-configurable files in /usr/share/config by default which violates 
FHS. Secondly, Debian tried to fix this by pre-pending /etc/kde3 overrode 
profile-specific paths also in the process.

When KDE starts, it looks for config files in X/share/config/* where X (in 
order of search) is:
 $HOME, profile paths, prefixes overrides, $KDEDIRS or $KDEDIR or 
compile-time-prefix

where profile paths and prefix overrides are picked up from /etc/kderc (if 
present). Compile time prefix defaults to /usr.The most common case, with 
no /etc/kderc, no profiles, no prefixes and no KDEDIRS is:

  $HOME/.kde/share/config:/usr/share/config

KDE assumption $prefix/share/config is writable fails when /usr is 
read-only mount (e.g. live CD). Debian requires user-editable configs to 
be under /etc. They pre-pended a hard-coded "/etc/kde3" before the 
$prefix/share/config and moved /usr/share/config files to /etc/kde3. Now 
the search sequence becomes:

   $HOME/.kde/share/config:/etc/kde3

This works fine until kiosk profiles come into picture. Say if "users" 
group members are mapped to "basic" profile in /etc/kde-profiles, then 
the sequence becomes:
  $HOME/.kde/share/config:/etc/kde3:/etc/kde-profiles/basic/share/config

But this means, settings in global config (/etc/kde3) overrides 
profile-specific settings instead of the other way round, creating issues 
like http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-kiosk&m=114233784602604&w=2

Subbu