/etc/gdm/gdm.schemas ignored in favor of /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas

[Mike Mol]

Ubuntu release: 11.04
Package: gdm

gdm:
  Installed: 2.32.1-0ubuntu3.2
  Candidate: 2.32.1-0ubuntu3.2
  Version table:
 *** 2.32.1-0ubuntu3.2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/main i386 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-security/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.32.1-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages
     2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-backports/main i386 Packages

What I expected to happen:
I edited /etc/gdm/gdm.schemas to set the DisallowTCP setting to 'false'. I expected the setting to take effect upon restarting gdm.

What happened instead:
I edited /etc/gdm/gdm.schemas to set the DisallowTCP setting to 'false'.
The setting did not take effect upon restarting gdm.

I edited /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas to set the DisallowTCP setting to 'false'.
The setting took effect upon restarting gdm.

(At this point, both /etc/gdm/gdm.schemas and /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas have DisallowTCP set to 'false')

Leaving /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas with DisallowTCP set to 'false', I again edited /etc/gdm/gdm.schemas to set the DisallowTCP setting to 'true'.

Upon restart of gdm, behavior was still such that DisallowTCP was set to 'false', indicating that /etc/gdm/gdm.schemas was being ignored in favor of /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report but your comments indicates you are simply misunderstanding gconf, it's not a bug, the .schemas are templates which are used to register values in the gconf database they are not read by anything at run time. you can use the gconf-schemas utility to register a schemas but usually you want to modify values in the database using gconf-editor rather

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

see http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/gconf-0.html.en as well

[Mike Mol (mikemol)]

I'll look at the gconf docs and get things working the 'proper' way for an individual user with user-supplied settings, but I dispute that there isn't a bug here; settings under /etc should override settings in /usr/share.

Even if the .schemas file is designed for configuring defaults settings. /etc/gdm/gdm.schemas appears to be intended to represent system-local defaults (as opposed to package defaults), and that file should either be respected or removed, not ignored.

Do I need to re-file to get that addressed?

[Mike Mol (mikemol)]

Ah, I misread the latter portion of your comment. gconf-schemas it is, then.