We installed the Red Hat RPMs that were delivered with Red Hat Desktop and 

found it overall to be quite easy to set up a connection to the Exchange Server. 

You still have to keep in mind some requirements to get this working.

Attention:

 Before using the Exchange connector, some prerequisites should 

be checked. It is necessary to start the Exchange virtual server in the http 

section of the Exchange system manager. You also need to enable HTTP 

protocol for the users. This is done in the user settings via the Active Directory 

Users console.

More information on the Novell Exchange Connector can be found at:

http://www.novell.com/products/connector/

Customization

You have a very high degree of flexibility in modifying the look and feel of a Linux 

client. For our client migration scenario, we chose to modify just a few things as a 

way of demonstrating some possibilities.

The first thing we did was to adjust the default background color and insert the 

ITSO Redbooks image on the background. This can easily be done by using the 

background settings application for the Gnome Desktop. Another possibility, 

especially to set this as a default value, is the use of the gconftool 2 with a 

command syntax as in Example 6 9.

Example 6 9   Using gconftool to replace the screen background image

#  gconftool 2   direct   config source \ 

xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory   type string   set \ 

/desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename 

itso logo.png

For further information on how to change values in the Gnome configuration or 

make changes that can be enforced for groups of users, see 5.2,  GNOME 

customization  on page 104. Specific details about using gconftool 2 can be 

found in 5.2.2,  gconftool 2  on page 105.

Gnome also offers a graphical editor for the settings, although the welcome 

screen of this tool says that using the editor is not the preferred way, so using it is 

at your own risk.

Another nice effect can be created by inserting another logo for the menu button. 

By default, Red Hat has replaced the Gnome logo with its own custom image. 

We replaced this by editing the following file:

/usr/share/pixmaps/redhat main menu.png

126 

Linux Client Migration Cookbook   A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop