Bug#639459: Same bug, years later.

[J Phelps]

So now you guys have forced "systemd" on all of us, and it doesn't even work.

The only difference between my error message and the one reported here is that
a different source file is indicated:

** (systemadm:21458): CRITICAL **: file /build/systemd-ui-GHIA4p/systemd-ui-3/src/systemadm.vala: line 339: uncaught error: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.systemd1: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1 (g-dbus-error-quark, 25)

Line 339 of systemadm.vala is a call to something called "Bus.get_proxy_sync":

                manager = Bus.get_proxy_sync(
                                user ? BusType.SESSION : BusType.SYSTEM,
                                "org.freedesktop.systemd1",
                                "/org/freedesktop/systemd1");


This is literally all the documentation I could find on "get_proxy_sync":

   http://valadoc.org/#!api=gio-2.0/GLib.Bus.get_proxy_sync

I'll save you the trouble of opening that link: It contains nothing but
the method prototype. What does it even do? Apparently we're not supposed
to worry about things like what API functions do anymore. Perhaps I should
just reboot and reinstall like they do on Windows.

It doesn't matter if you're root or not, the result is the same.

So now I'm sitting on a system on which I presumably can't change anything
unless I either get this non-working program that uses an undocumented API
to do something, or figure out the complex forest of "unit files" that have
been created behind the scenes. 

A little background: Systemd is of course running, but so is init. However,
it looks like systemd has already taken over everything, since systemd-logind
is running. 

I am not using GNOME 3, nor will I do so, though I have considered the
possibility that systemadm might require a GNOME 3 session or maybe even
Wayland, which would be consistent with the way the New Linux crowd does
things. Forcing me to downgrade to GNOME 3 from MATE would be a last straw
for me.