Ubuntu 12.04 LTSP-pnp Fat Clients--add menu item for all users

[David Groos]

As I describe in some detail in a blog post (
http://groosd.blogspot.com/2014/10/ubuntu-1204-ltsp-pnp-fat-clients-add.html)
I'm trying to add a launcher, for all users, in a menu for a program I
installed (CmapTools). For directions I've used info from an old How-to
that worked for me in the past. After doing this, and updating the chroot
image with "sudo ltsp-update-image --cleanup" and rebooting a client, the
menu item works for me on any client, but it doesn't appear for any other
user. Any ideas? I've copied my blog post below for quick reference.

I'm open to any solution to this problem such as:
https://launchpad.net/menueditor but not sure if these are current or work
with LTSP-pnp. How are other people solving this perhaps common problem?

Thanks,
David

*Copy of the blog post:*
I'm using a fresh setup of Ubuntu 12.04 LTSP-pnp with gnome-panel serving
18 Fat Client computers with a 2-NIC server setup. Students authenticate
through the district's Active Directory servers via Likewise Open. I have a
concept mapping application, CmapTools, that I want all users to be able to
access easily through a menu. I've used:
http://tuxtweaks.com/2009/07/how-to-add-item-gnome-menu/ in years past to
successfully add menu items for all users, but not sure if it works with
this version of Ubuntu. Doesn't work yet. This is what I did.

   1. Using the built-in menu editor I added the application to my menu
   (added it to the Internet menu).
   2. Make a desktop launcher by dragging the menu item to the desktop as
   per
   https://askubuntu.com/questions/155579/how-do-i-create-program-launcher-on-gnome-classic-desktop/173064#173064
   3. to open in gedit: sudo gedit
   '/home/my-user-name/Desktop/alacarte-made.desktop' then add
   "Categories=Utility" (Utility category makes it show up in the
   "Accessories" menu) to end of launcher so it looks like this: #!/usr/bin/env
   xdg-open [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=false
   Icon[en_US]=gnome-panel-launcher
   Exec=/usr/local/share/IHMC_CmapTools/bin/CmapTools Comment[en_US]=Cmaptools
   Name[en_US]=CmapTools Name=CmapTools Comment=Cmaptools
   Icon=gnome-panel-launcher Categories=Utility
   4. Move to a place where these launchers work (again, check this page
   for this info:
http://tuxtweaks.com/2009/07/how-to-add-item-gnome-menu/) sudo
   cp '/home/my-user-name/Desktop/alacarte-made.desktop' /usr/local/share/
   5. Backup the file I'm going to edit: sudo cp
   /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu.bak
   6. gedit didn't work to edit the menu file so had to use nano: sudo nano
   /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu
   7. Then added this, as per the directions referenced above
   (.../how-to-add...), in the Utility section:       <and>
   <filename>alacarte-made.desktop</filename>       </and>
   8. At this point it appeared for me in my menu on the server. To get it
   to appear in everyone's menus on the fat clients I updated the image: sudo
   ltsp-update-image --cleanup
   9. Then rebooted the client, logged in as a test client, checked the
   Accessories menu and it wasn't there!
   10. Logged out and then logged back in as my own user on the fat client
   and CmapTools was in the menu! So, works in my account but not in a student
   account on a client computer. What's going on?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/attachments/20141004/e33cfa82/attachment.html>