Understanding trouble

[Andrew Kane]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Ashley Benton <chuaukantli at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am having trouble to understand how the fact to type something into the
> terminal change the comportment of the system. An example would be :
> gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false .
> I don't see cat > or anything that would modify the original file but I am
> guessing that's here and I just don't know it. Any place where I could learn
> it or read about it to understand it better?
> Any advices would be appreciated.
> Thanks
>
> Meg
>

According to the gconftool man page it "...is the command-line  interface  tool
       that enables you to set the values of keys, display the values of keys,
       and install schemas from schema definition files when  you  install  an
       application.  The  GConf  preference keys are stored and managed by the
       GConf daemon (gconfd-2).  These keys are cached in memory, and saved to
       disk in XML format when appropriate."
     This suggest to me that gconftool alters the "preferences
database" which is instantiated in RAM, rather than doing anything to
the filesystem.
Further information is here:

http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/

It's over my head, hope it's helpful to you.