[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#372724: dbus-daemon sessions are launched and never exit

[jrodman at debbugs.spamportal.net]

Package: dbus
Version: 0.61-6
Severity: normal


A review of dbus-daemon processes on my machine looks as follows:

jrodman at Skonnos:~ >ps aux |grep dbus
100       3514  0.0  0.1   2184   644 ?        Ss   Apr30   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system
jrodman  15687  0.0  0.0   2180    56 ?        Ss   Apr30   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  23552  0.0  0.0   2184   476 ?        Ss   May05   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  23995  0.0  0.0   2056   228 ?        Ss   May05   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 9 --print-address 7 --session
jrodman  26034  0.0  0.0   2184   476 ?        Ss   May05   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  25919  0.0  0.0   2056   236 ?        Ss   May08   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  25970  0.0  0.0   2180   488 ?        Ss   May08   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  26394  0.0  0.0   2056   236 ?        Ss   May08   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 9 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  26446  0.0  0.0   2184   488 ?        Ss   May08   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 9 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  20490  0.0  0.0   2060   236 ?        Ss   May09   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  20542  0.0  0.1   2180   732 ?        Ss   May09   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  22875  0.0  0.0   2056   420 ?        Ss   Jun03   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  22926  0.0  0.1   2180   840 ?        Ss   Jun03   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman   2174  0.0  0.0   2060   400 ?        Ss   Jun04   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman   2225  0.0  0.1   2184   832 ?        Ss   Jun04   0:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jrodman  24111  2.1  1.6  12372  8328 pts/7    S+   03:05   0:01 /usr/bin/python2.3 -S /usr/bin/reportbug dbus

I certainly do not need 14 dbus-daemon processes running.  none of which
were ever active long enough to acquire any cputime.  I have attempted
to determine what is launching these and have failed.  

My understanding of the /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ script is that it will
place additional flags on the command line which are not appearing here.
My understanding of the dbus configfiles is that it should be possible
to configure them to close on session exit by default.

I really don't know, and it's possible that the error is actually in a
program using dbus.  I don't even understand how dbus gets launched
because in my grovelling around in the dbus documentation I was quickly
mired in both the theoretical and the wire protocol, neither of which do
I care about at all.

As a system administrator, I would like to be able to understand who is
supposed to launch dbus processes, and what their expected lifespan and
relationship with the software that uses them, and I would like this
information to be in some kind of README in /usr/share/doc/dbus.

If this is most likely the work of some program misusing dbus, can you
provide some idea of how such a program might be launching it, so that I
can attempt to track that program down and file a bug against it?

If this is somehow a design flaw in dbus, can you pass this bug
upstream?

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-jsr
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ISO-8859-1) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.iso88591)

Versions of packages dbus depends on:
ii  adduser                   3.87           Add and remove users and groups
ii  debianutils               2.16.1         Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  libc6                     2.3.6-13       GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libdbus-1-2               0.61-6         simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libexpat1                 1.95.8-3.2     XML parsing C library - runtime li
ii  libice6                   6.9.0.dfsg.1-6 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libsm6                    1:1.0.0-4      X11 Session Management library
ii  libx11-6                  2:1.0.0-6      X11 client-side library
ii  lsb-base                  3.1-10         Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip

dbus recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information