GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 440416
Too easy to accidentally kill dbus from Services settings and lock yourself out of services
Last modified: 2009-05-13 14:36:35 UTC
The bug has been opened on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-system-tools/+bug/112102 "Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools From the "Services settings" dialog (services-admin), I accidentally clicked the box for "System Communication bus (dbus)" instead of "Printer service (hplip)" directly above it. This happened because the dialog had stopped responding briefly while disabling "Printer Service (cupsys)" without any indication, and a slight inadvertant movement of the scrollwheel was registered before the mouse click after it had finished disabling cupsys, moving dbus under the mouse. Immediately Services closed and attempts to re-run it produced the message "you are not allowed to access the system configuration". I have no idea how a novice UNIX user would have figured this out. I'm not an experienced Linux user, but I've got 30 years experience with UNIX as a developer, network admin, and FreeBSD committer (^_^) and it took me maybe a quarter of an hour to figure out what the Linux, Debian, and/or Ubuntu ways of doing things were, track down the actual error ("failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket"), and figure out how to start dbus cleanly again. It should not be this easy to saw off the branch you are sitting on. Recommendations: 1a. Services Settings should fork and perform extended operations in the background, to avoid the UI freezing, or 1b. Services Settings should provide immediate feedback when it is performing an extended operation. And: 2a. Services settings should require an explicit "Apply" step, or 2b. Services that "Services Settings" depends on should warn the user that Services will terminate and wait for approval, or 2c. Services that "Services Settings" depends on should only be visible after selecting an "advanced" option. ..."
I'm the original reporter. In case you need more information I'm adding myself to the CC list.
I confirm this bug when I was trying stop unnecessary service ( for security reasons ) ( I unmarked because don't show any warning I was safe to make this modification ) I used from terminal( root) services-admin ( I think from kubuntu
I changed services-admin to consider DBus a critical service
This bug was origionally opened using Ubuntu's Lauchpad page (#112102). The link between this Bugzilla bug, and the Lauchpad bug seems to be severed. Several people on the Launchpad page have reported continued problems with this bug in subsequent versions of Ubuntu. I have confirmed that Ubuntu 8.10 & 9.04 continue to suffer from this bug. I have not found a workaround for 8.10. I have found one for 9.04, and the procedure is as follows: 1. Press the 'ESC' key during GRUB at start up. 2. Choose the "Recovery Mode" kernel option for your version of Ubuntu 3. When the "Recovery Menu" is displayed, choose "Drop to root shell prompt" 4. Type the following commands into the shell: ln -s /etc/init.d/dbus /etc/rc2.d/S12dbus exit 5. When the "Recovery Menu" is redisplayed, choose "Resume normal boot"