To restore the default preference values for a user, type the following command:
# gconftool-2 --direct --config-source \ user-configuration-source --recursive-unset
Replace user-configuration-source with the configuration source in the .gconf directory in the user's home directory. For example:
# gconftool-2 --direct \ --config-source xml:readwrite:$(HOME)/.gconf --recursive-unset
This command resets the values of all the preference keys, in all the subdirectories, from the user setting to the setting in the default configuration source file.