GimpShop Installation in a Reduced Rights (Secure) Environment

I had to install GimpShop for a client. They run in a reduced rights environment (why isn't everyone running their XP network that way?), which can be a little problematic with some software installations. Stupid software will require the user that will be using the software to have administrator rights to not only install the software, but to run it.

I'll cut gimpshop some slack because it is really just a hack to get a cross platform image manipulation software package to run under Windows and look like photoshop, but still, the installer could have been a lot smarter.

I installed the software as administrator for the domain and it seemed to work OK.

However, I ran into two issues...

Issue #1: Temporary and swap directories are not created correctly.

In fact, the .gimp-2.2 directory that was supposed to be under the user folder in "c:\documents and settings\username" was created as a file. I had to kill that file and make the directory by hand. Then I had to create the tmp and swap folders under that. I verified the rights were correct for those folders and ran the icon logged on as the user. The program seemed to start and I could fix up the folder pointers in "The GIMP" window File/Preferences.

However, that lead to Issue#2: The GIMP backgroundwindow.exe program would not close and it wouldn't open the other windows like they should, under the backgroundwindow's control (they would open as individual windows/applications). When I tried to close "The GIMP" window, it would hang and would have to be closed by cancelling with the task manager. After verifying rights and other things (and granting users the rights to change files in the "\program files\gimpshop\" which probably wasn't necessary), I checked the registry and sure enough, gimpshop makes the common mistake of putting its settings in HKLM\Software\GIMPBackground and not granting permissions enough for users to change the settings there. In reality, the best thing would be for these settings to be under the USER, not HKLM. The fix, though, is to grant the machine users and domain user the right to change these settings.

Here's how:

• Log on as administrator (or if you are running with reduced rights, do a: runas /user:domain\administrator regedt32) and start regedt32.exe
• Navigate to HKLM\Software\GIMPBackground
• Right click on that folder and select Permissions...
• Add "domain users" and "users" groups
• Give them "Full rights"
• Click OK and close regedit

Now try starting the gimpshop icon, and everything should work.