Appearance Preferences loads before login

[ZeRoShock]

My friend has got his Appearance Preferences displaying at the login screen on boot up. He has asked for my help, we are both new to linux. He says that he used the command:

sudo cp /usr/share/applications/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow

To me it looks like he copied a file. So I tried to delete the file in /usr/share/gdm/autostart. and it would not let me. Can anyone give me a command to undo this? gui help would work too if there is a way.

thanks for any help

Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) 64-bit
Kernel Linux 2.6.32-23-generic
Gnome 2.30.0

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

You must have root privileges to delete that file. Use sudo to gain root privileges.

cd /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow
sudo rm -rf gnome-appearance-properties.desktop

***Make sure to type correct file name. You can not recover file if you delete it using rm command.

Or

Press Alt+F2 and type this

gksu nautilus

It will open Nautilus with root privileges. Navigate to LoginWindow folder in Nautilus and delete file.

[kurtdriver]

Your friend probably hasn't setup sudo, and therefore it won't work. Use gksu or su -c "command-to run-". I guess you could move it to /dev/null. If there's another option I'd love to learn about it.

[devils casper]

There is no need to setup sudo in Ubuntu unless you want to assign root privileges to all new users created after installation.

[ZeRoShock]

devils casper- cant believe i over looked my privileges. thanks for the help.

Kurtdriver- not sure what you mean. i do have root privileges using sudo and my password.