Every minute or so gconf-d starts writing to various xml files (no changes though it seems). Files like: ./.gconf/system/networking/connections/4/802-11-wireless/%gconf.xml ./.gconf/system/networking/connections/4/connection/%gconf.xml things like that. These constant writes are preventing the disk from sleeping and saving power. Please to be fixing.
Hmm; it may be the connection timestamp updates, but those are only scheduled every 5 minutes. Also, if NM roams to a new AP, that will trigger an update of GConf to store the new BSSID. That could happen at any time, but shouldn't write anything out if nothing has changed (ie if the BSSID was already stored).
I agree that it shouldn't (: But it is, and I'm sitting on my couch, not roaming around or anything. Anything I can do to help debug why it thinks it should write?
I think even a 5 minute update isn't going to make disk spindown very possible, FWIW...
Is this problem still happening and if so what package names and versions are involved?
This does not seem to be happening any more, not at the frequency it was before.