I've been trying to build a enterprise desktop using Ubuntu 20.04 but have been unable to get gnome to read the dconf keys and locks from the system-db without disabling the user configurable dconf settings.

If I export the DCONF_PROFILE variable in /etc/profile to user the shell will load only the user-db and refuse to open the keys set in the system-db section of the profile. If I set this to local it will read only the system-db and keep users from making any customizations.

I'd always assumed that dconf allowed the system-db to set the shell presets and then allowed the user to change unlocked keys, but I can not determine how to get this behavior.

Is there something funky going on with 20.04 that changes the dconf behavior? I feel like I'm following the gnome systems administrator guide to a tee but the results are not what was expected.

1 Answer

I believe that I have found the issue for anyone who might come to the same problem as I did.

If umask is set for strict permissions on file creation (mine was set for rw------- on new files) than dconf update will write a unreadable binary and the users will be unable to read the dconf keys within the db.

I have set my scripts to chmod 644 on all the files in my /etc/dconf/db and this has resolved the issue.

Hope this helps.

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