I've mostly figured it out Gustin's suggestion is something I've done in the past but in this case there was no text box where I could enter an arbitrary string that I could then grep for. What I finally did was use the find command to find all files modified in the last 60 seconds. That technique found
~\.gconf\apps\gnome-power-manager/disks/%gconf.xml That technique of finding all files modified very recently didn't work reliably. It looks like Gnome or some subset of it does not flush changes made in the GUI to config files immediately, it can sometime take a few minutes before they show up on the file system. So I only really discovered the config file using this technique because I was lucky. After Gustin mentioned gconf-editor I used that and found it in there as well. All this really did was raise another question. I know what text file the setting is maintained in, but that still doesn't answer how the setting actually gets set on the system. Some more digging found that gnome-power-manager uses dbus to communicate these settings changes to a daemon called upower. It looks like upower manipulates the kernel directly to do power management, however I haven't absolutely confirmed this yet. It looks like hdparm and hdparm.conf aren't used under normal circumstances on an Ubuntu 10.10 desktop. That is a little bit annoying because on a standard Ubuntu 10.10 desktop the hdparm.conf file is sitting there in /etc with no warnings about how you really shouldn't be using it to manage power if you have Gnome installed. It looks like the hdparm.conf file will still get used if you do set things in it, which I suspect could lead to hilarious and infuriating problems for the unwary. If anybody knows if upower calls other tools or just manipulates the kernel directly I'd be interested to know. -----Original Message----- From: clug-talk-boun...@clug.ca [mailto:clug-talk-boun...@clug.ca] On Behalf Of Gustin Johnson Sent: April-17-11 4:04 AM To: CLUG General Subject: Re: [clug-talk] Slightly Obscure Ubuntu Question My first guess is that it is something buried in gconf-editor (this is like regedit for GNOME, a really bad IMO). Failing that, what I have done is set some weird value, in this case a random 3 digit number, and then gone grepping through the file system looking for that number. On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 11:19 PM, Craig McLean <craigmcl...@shaw.ca> wrote: > Hello. > > I'm poking around in Ubuntu 10.10 desktop edition installed on a laptop > (Tecra M5). In System->Preferences->Power Management there is an option to > spin down the hard disks when possible. I'd like to know what text file > gets modified behind the scenes when you flip that option. I suspected that > it was /etc/hdparm.conf however I'm pretty sure that isn't true. I've > flipped the option on and off and hdparm.conf doesn't get touched. > > The Power Management Preferences window has tabs for "On AC Power" and "On > Battery Power" so I suspect there is some configuration mechanism been used > but I haven't discovered it yet. > > Does anybody know? > > Craig. > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > clug-talk@clug.ca > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying > _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list clug-talk@clug.ca http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list clug-talk@clug.ca http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
