Irene

I am building a legacy desktop image for Rock64 and there are a few things I am trying to customize at build time.  I modified userpatches/customize-image.sh, but I am not getting expected results.  Here are some things I am trying to modify:
 
1. I want to have the desktop come up in solid black color, no image.  I made the following changes to userpatches/customize-image.sh:
 
    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options 'none'
    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background primary-color '#000000'
 
But I am still seeing the Armbian image on my desktop.  What else do I have to modify?
 
2. I need to get rid of the prompt that asks for the root user password.  I added the following lines to userpatches/customize-image.sh:
 
rm -f /root/.not_logged_in_yet
echo -e "password\npassword" | (passwd root)
 
This got rid of the root password prompt, but now the image doesn't boot into the desktop GUI.  It stops at the Linux CLI prompt.  What else do I need to modify in customize-image.sh to make it boot into GUI?
 
3.  I need to create another user and I'd like to have my box automatically boot as this user.  I added the following lines to userpatches/customize-image.sh (in addition to stuff I added in #2 above):
 
    echo -e "$PW\n$PW\n\n" | (adduser new_user)
 
What else do I have to modify to make the box boot as this user?
 
4. I would like to get rid of Locale prompt and always choose en_US.UTF-8.  How would I do that?
 
5. I am trying to add a systemd startup script at build time.  I added the following lines to userpatches/customize-image.sh:
 
cp /tmp/overlay/*.service /lib/systemd/system
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable myservice.service
 
I have myservice.service in userpatches/overlay directory.  But, the service doesn't start on my target.  
 
Thank you in advance for any help I can get!  Incidentally, it seems like I can only post to this forum once in a 24 hour period.  How can I get past this restriction?  My answers may be delayed due to this.