GLib-GIO-Message: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend. Happened in Ubuntu 16.10 after going from GNOME to Unity to GNOME again

Question

GNOME in Ubuntu 16.10 has been working great for me on my HiDPI laptop. As linux users with HiDPI displays know, chaning the window scaling factor is necessary to make the machine usable without an electron microscope.

Today I logged out, logged into a Unity desktop session, and left to come back to GNOME. For some reason, all of my GNOME settings that made the HiDPI display usable seemed to be gone. Here's the worst part:

I would like to use:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor': <2>}"

But this just results in the message:

GLib-GIO-Message: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend.  Your settings will not be saved or shared with other applications.

Apologies, but I'm not too knowledgeable on the intricacies of this. I would love to provide more info, but I'm not sure what's relevant.

Any help is MASSIVELY appreciated.

Answer 1

I had the same problem, this solved line solved me

export GIO_EXTRA_MODULES=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gio/modules/

here is a little info about it https://github.com/conda-forge/glib-feedstock/issues/19