Where does the Guest Session store its configuration files

Question

In my computer I have my account (cyrex) and the guest session. If my user cyrex stores its files in /home/cyrex where does the guest session store its files?. For example, if I wanted to set the guest in a way so that when it loads it has a specific Wallpaper, Launcher icon size and any other customization I would want to do with it.

Answer 1

In /tmp/guest-[xxxxxx], where the x's are a string of letters and numbers. That folder contains all the normal home folders for a user.

The guest account is managed by lightdm through /usr/sbin/guest-account, which is a shell script. After setting up the guest account, the script will run a preferences script if it exists: /etc/guest-session/prefs.sh

A convenience set of scripts to make this process easier, along with some explanation of how to use them, can be found at CustomizeGuestSession.

The basic settings you can change are:

Firefox preference settings
Disabling the login-sound
gettexted strings
Set a Folder for storing files permanently
Show an Info dialog at startup
Set an Icon on the desktop
Set the guest account language and keyboard

I haven't tested everything, but after using it a few times things seems to work well and seem easy to modify. I figured changing the language had the most potential for bugs, but I set the guest language to Chinese and it worked great.

Some things need to be added, such as changing the background.

There are two main files prefs.sh, which runs as root and then calls auto.sh, which runs as the guest user, as it finishes.

Features can be added to either file as appropriate. To change the wallpaper I added the following line to auto.sh.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file:///usr/share/backgrounds/Leftover_by_Sagar_jain.jpg"

Launcher icon size was a little trickier since it is a relocatable schema and DConf Editor says it has No schema, but the command is:

gesettings set org.compiz.unityshell:/org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/ icon-size 32

Thanks to @dobey for an explanation of using relocatable schemas.

The original scripts were posted on the Ubuntu Forums by Gunnar Hjalmarsson.

Answer 2

I just rewrote the tutorial Customize Guest Session. The main approach in the new tutorial - making use of a special purpose user account - is a more convenient way to customize the guest session feature.