understanding dconf and gdm magic

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I have difficulty understanding how dconf works. It consists of several profiles with several databases (user-db, system-db, file-db) but there is no mention of its priority.

What puzzled me is the following observation:

Putting Greeter settings into the local database (/etc/dconf/db/local.d/default):

[org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/power]
sleep-inactive-ac-timeout=1200
sleep-inactive-ac-type='blank'

The profile (/etc/dconf/profile/user):

user-db:user
system-db:local

This does not do anything, seems that Greeter ignores those. I can do dconf dump / and it lists my settings.

But when putting the same settings into a new gdm profile (/etc/dconf/profile/gdm):

user-db:user
system-db:gdm
file-db:/usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults

the Greeter settings are honored. When I repeat dconf dump / there is no difference, regardless where I put these settings.

I was under the impression that all settings are merged, but obviously applications have the possibility to read from specific databases only. Or did I miss something?

I expected that all dconf settings are merged and that gdm reads them, regardless in which database they are stored. Otherwise I would expect gsettings/dconf to show from which database the setting comes from, but they don't.

thx!

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