File attributes for icons are stored in binary files inside ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/.
To read an attribute for a file you need to use the gvfs-info command supplied by the gcfs-bin package.
To read the complete metadata stored from a file/folder on the gvfs use gvfs-info -a "metadata::*" <path_to_file/folder>, ie
gvfs-info -a "metadata::*" /home/bruno/Desktop/Screenshot\ at\ 2011-12-14\ 21:29:29.png
attributes:
metadata::icon-scale: 2.6875
metadata::nautilus-icon-position-timestamp: 1323894580
metadata::screen:
metadata::nautilus-icon-position: 77,15
To set an attribute inside the gvfs you use the command gvfs-set-attribute which is also part of gvfs-bin as this gvfs-set-attribute <path_to_some_file/folder> metadata::some-key "some_value"
If you want to change the scale of an icon in gnome you need to change the icon-scale attribute so for the file shown before if I wanted to reset the scale to 1 would do that as this
gvfs-set-attribute /home/bruno/Desktop/Screenshot\ at\ 2011-12-14\ 21:29:29.png metadata::icon-scale "1"
Unfortunately I could only see the changes after I logged off and back in on, unity --replace & did not do the trick. I am not sure if you can force Gnome to reload the data from the gvfs binaries.
Try: Right click on the icon and selection "Original Size", then attempt to resize again.
Otherwise, move aside the dconf/gconf settings directories and restart nautilus (log off) and try again.
Everything checks out here, resizing both .desktop files and normal files.
Best Answer
Right-click on your desktop, click on Desktop Settings. There you should have 3 tabs: Background, Menus, and Icons. CLick on Icons and you should see Icon size. Adjust Icon size accordingly.