Simple system-wide autoconfiguration for GNOME 3

[Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch>]

Hi,

I can somewhat influence GNOME 3 (wheezy) to my taste,
with the following commands, to be run under X11/GNOME and valid
for the logged user only:

   gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.desktop volumes-visible true
   gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons true
   gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri ''
   gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background primary-color '#000000'
   gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background secondary-color '#000000'
   gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode 'sloppy'
   gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click false
   gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides button-layout :minimize,maximize,close

Unfortunately, gsettings seems to be interactively communicating with
some daemon (dbus), and this daemon doesn't exist when I am installing.
Moreover, the user doesn't exist yet, and I want a system-wide default.

I am automatically installing with FAI. Below, I will remove the FAI
details (such as $target) so to make it more understandable.

I tried a list of different ideas, and the last one is the following,
for example for the first gsettings above.

   gconftool --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --type boolean --set /org/gnome/nautilus/desktop/volumes-visible true

This creates, correctly, a file /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/%gconf-tree.xml
which seems to contain correct settings.  However they are not activated.

What is the best way to automatically and system-wide set GNOME configurations,
through bash, at automatic installation time ?

Thank you for any wheezy/GNOME3 compatible pointers.