Customizing the live user

[Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org>]

Hello,

I've made a custom KDE 4.3.1 live cd, but whenever I start it up, kaboom 
(http://packages.debian.org/sid/kaboom) get launched, which I don't want and I believe the same 
happens with the 'official' KDE4.3 image.
I don't know the details of kaboom, but afaik it gets triggered by either a .kde3 or .kde4 directory 
in a users home directory.
So in order to correct that, I've extracted the iso and the squashfs system within it and chrooted 
into that. See http://www.debe17.com/web_pages/deans_custome_livecd_howto_23apr08.php.html#139614 
for the instructions I've used.
But I found out that the /home directory is completely empty, so also no entry for user 'user'. So I 
guess the user 'user' gets created during the startup of the live-cd.
Is there a way to customize that part? If so, where should I start digging?

Another thing that happens when a new user starts KDE4 for the first time is that the Aconadi server 
gets started and various settings get migrated.
I would like that to also have happened before creating my (updated) iso image, so someone starting 
my live-cd won't see those.
I'm aware of the /etc/skel/ directory and that you can set a number of things up in there, but I 
believe it is not enough for the things I want to do/customize.

What I'm basically looking for is a way to (better) customize the live user experience.
Does someone have a solution and/or pointers for this?

Thanks in advance,
   Diederik