MATE Session Bus Errors
While updating the living room media player to Slackware 14.2, I repeatedly saw log messages like the following:
mate-session[3790]: CRITICAL: error getting session bus: \
Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-CI8LWEDHhW: Connection refused
For many days I tried to identify the cause. While chasing other bugs I noticed something out of place.
In the normal login account directory, the ~/.gvfs directory was unreadable with the infamous ????????? listing.
I logged out the user, jumped to run level 3, and deleted the directory. I returned to run level 4. The media player is configured for auto-login.
Once again the ~/.gvfs directory was unreadable.
Manually deleting the directory and letting the system create the directory resulted in the infamous ????????? listing.
Interestingly, after logging out the user, the directory was readable with chmod 700 permissions.
I was having no such problems with my other systems running 14.2.
I looked at the ~/.gvfs directory for my login accounts on the other systems. The directory permissions were chmod 500. That's right, r-x------. Unusual permissions. Same oddball permissions on my Ubuntu MATE systems.
I logged out the account and manually changed the permissions to chmod 500. I rebooted. This time there were no infamous ????????? listing or log messages.
To avoid further problems I added chmod 500 /home/*/.gvfs in both rc.local* scripts. This seems like duct tape though.
The fundamental issue is why upstream developers use such an esoteric design. Why are users confronted with this nonsense?
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: MATE, Slackware
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