Contents of /etc/skel not copied to /home/knoppix

[bhaskar]

I have successfully remastered Knoppix before (e.g., the OpenVistA VivA FOIA Gold live CDs at http://sourceforge.net/projects/worldvista), but I have never before today tried to put stuff in /etc/skel so that it is copied to /home/knoppix on boot up. However, it looks as if the contents of /etc/skel are not getting copied to /home/knoppix.

Here is /etc/skel:

knoppix@ttyp2[knoppix]$ ls -l /etc/skel
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Apr 2 07:25 /etc/skel -> /KNOPPIX/etc/skel
knoppix@ttyp2[knoppix]$ ls -l /etc/skel/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Apr 2 2005 Animation
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 Nov 10 18:47 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 2048 Apr 19 2004 GNUstep
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Apr 19 2004 tmp

Notice that there is a directory Animation there, as well as a directory GNUstep. Notice that neither is present in /home/knoppix:

knoppix@ttyp2[knoppix]$ ls -l /home/knoppix
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 knoppix knoppix 160 Apr 2 12:26 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 knoppix knoppix 40 Apr 19 2004 tmp

What am I doing wrong? Thanx muchly.

-- Bhaskar

[UnderScore]

From my HOWTO http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13867

I must now mention the file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45xsession. This script controls how knoppix behaves & how knoppix creates the knoppix user's home directory. I am looking for the ninth occurence of rsync in the script and it is found at the line 128:

126: if [ -z "$DONTCHANGE" ]; then
127: # No persistent homedir, copy everything
128: rsync -Ha --ignore-existing /etc/skel/{.kde*,Desktop} $HOME/ 2>/dev/null
129: [ "$USER" = "knoppix" ] && rsync -Ha --ignore-existing /usr/share/knoppix/profile/{.kde*,Desktop} $HOME/ 2>/dev/null

It is line 128 which populates the /home/knoppix folder. So In line 128, I delete from & including the { to the }. It is changed as follows.

126: if [ -z "$DONTCHANGE" ]; then
127: # No persistent homedir, copy everything
128: rsync -Ha --ignore-existing /etc/skel/ $HOME/ 2>/dev/null
129: [ "$USER" = "knoppix" ] && rsync -Ha --ignore-existing /usr/share/knoppix/profile/{.kde*,Desktop} $HOME/ 2>/dev/null

Make the change and save the 45xsession file.

I hope this helps.
James

[knopx4me]

Bhaskar

If what James mentioned above does not work for you, try to change the permissions on those folders. Do chroot to the mastered folder, then do:

chmod a+rw /etc/skel/GNUstep for example.

I had a similler problem and solved it by this solution.