You can set a mandatory value or a default value for a preference key. Mandatory values can be set only by administrators and users cannot override these values. However, users can change the default values.
Before you change mandatory preference values or default preference values for users, you must ensure that the GConf daemon is not running for any user. Ensure that all users are logged out before you change preference values for users.
To set a mandatory value or a default value for a preference key, use the gconftool-2 command, as follows:
# gconftool-2 --direct \ --config-source configuration-source \ --type data-type \ --set preference-key value
For example, to set www.proxy.xyz.com as the mandatory HTTP proxy host, type the following command:
# gconftool-2 --direct \ --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory \ --type string --set /system/http_proxy/host www.proxy.xyz.com
You can also use the gconftool-2 command to set default values. For example, to set the default number of workspaces to five, type the following command:
# gconftool-2 --direct \ --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \ --type int --set /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 5