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This is on Ubuntu 15.10. I had a ~/.config/dconf/user file of about 19kb. I back this up whenever I do a Deja-dup backup. After I recently reinstalled Ubuntu the newly installed ~/.config/dconf/user file is about 10 kb. When I delete the new file and restore the original with duplicity it shows up in Nautilus as 19 kb as expected. However when I reboot the system, the file has somehow reverted to the size of 10 kb. Any ideas on what's going on here?

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Put the user file you want in ~/.config/dconf/ named as user.old

Then go ctrl+alt+f3 to go to a tty. When there login & from prompt -

rm /home/yourusername/.config/dconf/user

mv /home/yourusername/.config/dconf/user.old /home/yourusername/.config/dconf/user

sudo reboot

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  • Thanks for the reply. I did that with the same result. When I reboot the old file is back.
    – 72saab
    Mar 31, 2016 at 17:28
  • I take that back. If i follow those instructions exactly it works. So why did that work and a duplicity restore not work?
    – 72saab
    Mar 31, 2016 at 18:11
  • Basically /dconf /user is loaded into memory on log in & when you log out or restart it's rewritten from mem. So to replace that file you need to do it outside of your 'normal' user env. like from a tty or from another install or other user session. This is also why you need to restart from the tty after replacing, if you went back ala ctrl+alt+f7 you'd end up with the orig. user file in mem when logging out or restarting.
    – doug
    Mar 31, 2016 at 23:15
  • That explains things. I'm thinking that I might be better off using dconf dump to dump the settings to a text file. Then use dconf load when I want to restore the settings to the database. I would need to do the dump periodically (in a cron job?) to keep the text file up to date. This technique is explained here (in the checked answer) : unix.stackexchange.com/questions/199836/…
    – 72saab
    Apr 1, 2016 at 17:12

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