Please forgive me if I somehow messed up the quote attribution. There was a lot of stuff I was able to cull. :)
On 12/5/23, David Christensen <[email protected]> wrote: > On 12/5/23 10:33, Stephen P. Molnar wrote: > > I decided to try something. I logged in to the rescue mode as root and > > entered startx at the prompt. This generated the error: > > > > Unable to contact settings server > > failed to execute child process "dbus-launch" (No such file or > directory) > > > That looks like a meaningful clue. I run into that message occasionally after brand new installs via debootstrap. I can't remember what triggers it. It's something like trying to right click then open a file via mousepad or use that "Open Terminal Here" option from within Thunar (for both). At some point in my own experience, I tried "apt-cache search dbus-launch" because the "No such file or directory" told me the system thought there should be a file by that name. Search returned "dbus-x11" as the only potential option. It wasn't installed so I attempted installing it. It works immediately every time for my situation. As an aside, if "apt-cache search" doesn't find anything for a not found file, maybe something like apt-file will show a package that might be missing. A second thing that could be tried is to rename "/home/<user>/.Xauthority" to something else. If this was me, I'd rename it singularly definitive as e.g. .Xauthority20231205-1626 (time and date). I'll often also add on a couple words that describe the problem I was having when renaming the file. Makes it easy to decide whether to delete it if the system starts working properly with the new replacement. Then try logging in. I haven't had to do this in a LONG time, but it seems like the system will simply generate a new file. For some reason, the old one just gets corrupted and starts failing. Getting kicked back to the login GUI is exactly what happens to me when this file is corrupted. When I haven't properly installed that GUI and am having to login from the console screen, startx will just keep kicking me back to the command line in this same situation. As a matter of fact, I think that may also be where I learned about .Xauthority. Seems like it gets a head nod during that type of login fail. You shouldn't have to do anything like create a new empty file or anything because /etc/skel does not include .Xauthority as one of the default files for all new adduser creations. That was my hint to attempt this option years ago when it felt like I had tried every other option at the time. That's all I've got. Best wishes fixing this soon... By the way, the dbus-launch error has happened for me on both xfce4 and lxqt desktop environments. Cindy :) -- Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA * runs with birdseed *
