[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#995128: dbus-user-session: Non-functional dbus-user-session installation

[Simon McVittie]

Control: tags -1 + moreinfo

On Sun, 26 Sep 2021 at 12:01:51 -0700, Francois Marier wrote:
> I installed dbus-user-session but it doesn't look functional:
...
> I'm not too sure if I should be manually starting it from my desktop
> environment (i3 + gnome-settings-daemon)

What's meant to happen is:

* your display manager runs the /etc/pam.d/common-session stack, which
  includes "session optional pam_systemd.so" from the libpam-systemd package

* pam_systemd tells systemd (pid 1) to start user at 1000.service, which is
  systemd --user, launching default.target by default

* default.target includes dbus.socket because
  /usr/lib/systemd/user/sockets.target.wants/dbus.socket says so

* dbus.socket listens on $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bus

* the first time something connects to that socket, it starts dbus.service,
  which is dbus-daemon --session --address=systemd: (plus some other options)

Presumably something has gone wrong somewhere in that chain of events?

> $ ls -lh $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bus
> ls: cannot access '/run/user/1000/bus': No such file or directory
> 
> $ systemctl --user status dbus.service
> Failed to get properties: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
> 
> $ systemctl --user status dbus.socket
> Failed to get properties: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1

If you can't tell what's wrong by comparing the chain of events I described
with what is actually happening on your system, here are some other things
that would be useful information:

Is there a "systemd --user" process running as your uid?

Is there a "dbus-daemon --session" process running as your uid?

Is anything D-Bus-related logged in the systemd Journal when you log in?

What does `systemd-cgls` say about these various services?

    smcv