GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 331752
epiphany should not terminate if it cannot get access to message bus
Last modified: 2010-01-31 19:44:34 UTC
Please describe the problem: Guys, gnome/X apps are inherently network aware and thus *MUST* be able to be spawned remotely. The current behavior of ephipnay popping a dialog Startup failed because of the following error: Unable to connect to session bus: Unable to determine the address of the message bus and terminating is incorrect. Whether or not it can get access to the message bus should not cause it to fail to startup. All other apps (evince, etc) that uses the message bus can start up remotely, but epiphany terminates. The console message is enough. You should not popup a dialog and then refuse to start ! Steps to reproduce: 1. Login remotely to a machine having epiphany 2. Set up your $DISPLAY correctly 3. Attempt to start up ephipany Actual results: laptop /usr/src/sources% epiphany ** (epiphany:16727): WARNING **: Unable to connect to session bus: Unable to determine the address of the message bus and the program exits. Expected results: Print the message (as above) *but* carry on regardless ! Does this happen every time? Yes Other information:
It's impossible to carry on, since that will corrupt your profile (bookmarks, history, cookies, cache).
So why can i start firefox/thunderbird/seamonkey/mozilla etc without corrputing all those ? What about using correct locking ?
How do you start firefox locally + remotely? If I do that, I get an error box about the profile already being in use. Gtkmozembed profile locking is not implemented (except on trunk (gecko 1.9)).
I didn't say i want to start 2 instances. All i said that X apps *must* be able to be started remotely. You should be able to ssh/telne to a remote box and start up any x app and get it displayed on your local machine. Using dbus the way ephipany is currently doing means you cannot start an instance remotely.
Ok, so start 2 remote instances on different remote hosts -> how does the 2nd instance find out the profile is in use? That's where dbus comes in.
But you're not getting my point. I want to start up a SINGLE remote ephiphany browser. So if you are saying that ephipany is not supposed to be used remotely, then it's your opinion but you're breaking the X design. I can ssh to a box currently and remotely start a ff/seamonkey/mozilla/tbunderbird browser just fine. Surely logic can be intoroduced that says if a *second* instance is started then use the dbus logic, fine, but if you're saying that ephiphany now doesn't support remote display, then you've got a serious design flaw IMO.
If you're *sure* you don't have another instance running, you can use dbus-launch to start epiphany.
*** Bug 344246 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
User cases: 1a. While working from home/a café, I shell into a university machine to access a journal the university has an (IP-controlled) subscription to. 1b. Ditto, with "business" and "internal server" substituted. 1c. Ditto, with "generic institution" and "generic service" substituted. 2a. While on a network with restrictive policies, I shell home to access a blocked website. 2b. Ditto, with "behind the Great Firewall" and "a subversive website" substituted. 2c. Ditto, with "a network with a BOFH keen on gathering blackmail material" and "a porn/gambling/other questionable website" substituted. Users often launch browsers over ssh - as much as any other X-based application, I'd guess - and do so in situations that do not justify a full remote login. Some sort of solution - even if it's as stopgap as "I'm about to rape your dog*. [Cancel] [Onward!]" - would avoid alienating the "Power Userz" and giving ammunition to the "Gnome suckz!" crowd. * For "dog", read "profile".
*** Bug 344611 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 347814 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
epiphany didn't break like this in the version shipped with FC4. I can't see why this was changed. It was working fine before.
Running $ dbus-launch --exit-with-session epiphany gets ephy running happily. (Obviously, you need to be sure your homedir isn't being used by another ephy elsewhere.) Perhaps info on this could be added to the dbus error message? I know it's a hack, but it works...
You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you please check again if the issue you reported here still happens in a recent version and update this report by adding a comment and adjusting the 'Version' field? Again thank you for reporting this and sorry that it could not be fixed for the version you originally used here. Without feedback this report will be closed as INCOMPLETE after 6 weeks.
Hm. If this bug is still valid, it should be taken care of. I like the suggestion in comment 13. Can any reporter please tell us whether this is still an issue?
I think this bug can be closed as OBSOLETE. Epiphany 2.29.x runs fine here without a $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS environment variable set, even without the dbus-launch wrapper suggested in comment 13.