On the advice of AlbertoSalvia Novella , I've submitted a new bug report against dbus with links to all the bugs (in my install of Xubuntu 14.04) that I vaguely suspect are related to one another:
Bug #1347272 (DBus communication problems affecting multiple packages) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1314782 Title: multimedia keys don't work when xfce4-volumed is run in daemon mode To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/xfce4-volumed/+bug/1314782/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
