GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server

Balanzone · July 26, 2011, 4:52pm

Hi.
I developed a java application to organize the articles and notes for what I need for my work reports.
The path appear in a jlist component and by clicking on I’d like the file opened.
The application works fine in /home side.
In /root side I get this message error:
“GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon.”
I work in KDE (OpenSuse 11.4). Why I need a configuration tipically of GNOME?
Many thanks in advance for the help.

hcvv · July 26, 2011, 8:09pm

To begin with, I do not know anything about writing Java applications, thus I read this noly as that you are running an application.

Then when I understand you correct, you say it runs when in /home, you probably meaning being within the home directory of a user (/home/<username>) being that user, or is my assumption wrong?

Then you say it does not run when you are in /root, with is the home directory of the root user. Thus suggesting that you run then as root (else you would not even have access to /root). Why do you even have the idea of running an application as root?

Balanzone · July 27, 2011, 11:23am

I am sorry. I’ll try to be clearer.
The application resides in /usr/local/myfolder.
Briefly, among other options, I can choose from a list of paths to files shown in a JList component.
By clicking on the path I would like to open the file with the application system configured to do so (Okular or Acrobat Reader for .pdf file, Kwrite for .txt file and so on).
But I get this message error:
“GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon.”
The error is not a question of permissions: I get the same in user mode and in superuser mode.
I work in OpenSuse 11.4 with KDE.
Configuring GConf, I believe, is typical of GNOME and I don’t know how to handle it.
Can you help me to find a solution, examples about GConf configuration or documentation?
Many thanks.

martin_helm · July 27, 2011, 11:43am

I am myself a developer working with java, but I fail to see what you really
do and therefore do not understand your problem. You may want to install
gconf-editor to look into your gconf settings. And the general documentation
can be found here
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/

Google spits out a lot of results on that error, without more details from
your side (a detailed description what you really do step by step) I cannot
help much more. Maybe you have simply a problem with wrong rights of some
configuration files like this
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gconf/+bug/367169

djh-novell · July 27, 2011, 12:05pm

I can’t answer fully, but maybe I can give you some pointers.

> I work in KDE (OpenSuse 11.4). Why I need a configuration tipically of
> GNOME?

Most probably because whatever application you are running makes use of
some Gnome library, which tries to phone home

Do you perhaps have some Gnome components installed but not its basic
infrastructure? (i.e. broken dependencies?)

> “GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common
> cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon.”

When I get that error, it is because I have used su in a terminal to
become another user, and then started a graphical application that uses
Gnome libraries. The application can’t make use of the original
logged-in user’s session information. (which makes sense from a security
point of view)

> The application works fine in /home side.
> In /root side I get this message error:

I don’t understand what you mean by this, especially in the context of:

> The error is not a question of permissions: I get the same in user
> mode and in superuser mode.

I think you need to provide more information about your code, preferably
a cut-down, minimal example program that compiles and shows the problem.

Balanzone · July 29, 2011, 12:58pm

Well.
My project is a desktop application which manages data stored in a database. (Hibernate, swing).
I used all the canonical stuff for this kinds of applications: main window, forms, text and area fields, buttons and so on.
In a form showing data got from the database there is a Jlist component displaying the paths of files added to increase documentation. For example: /home/name/mydir/WhatHappened.pdf
The code is very simple as you can see.

private void jList1MouseClicked(java.awt.event.MouseEvent evt) {
String valore = jList1.getSelectedValue().toString();
try{
File file = new File(valore);
if(file.exists() && Desktop.isDesktopSupported()){
Desktop.getDesktop().open(file);
}else{
Chiusure c = new Chiusure();
c.fileNoEsiste();
}
}catch(Exception ex){
System.out.println("La causa: “+ex.getCause() +” il messaggio: "+ex.getMessage());

    }
  }

In development environment (Netbeans 7.0) the files are opened without problem.
If I launch application from the .jar I get the annoying error message that’s question of my posts.
I hope to have been clear.
Many thanks in advance.

martin_helm · July 29, 2011, 2:16pm

Ok, now I understand what you are after. From reading your code it should
work as you expect out of the box. I can test later today since I do not sit
now in front of my development machine (I never needed to use the Desktop
class to invoke the standard application to open a file on linux until now
only on windows, but I am interested to see what happens on linux).
By the way can you answer in the meantime the following question (not sure
if it makes any difference at all): Are you using openJDK or the sun/oracle
java version in netbeans and directly on your system? Depending on your
settings in the IDE they may differ.
When I am back at my PC I hope I can tell you more.

martin_helm · July 29, 2011, 10:08pm

martin_helm wrote:
> When I am back at my PC I hope I can tell you more.
>
I cannot reproduce your problem (it works with openJDK and with the oracle
java version, I tested on two machines now - see below which i used), so I
am a bit clueless now what your problem can be, it seems not to be your
program but something outside of java seems to be misconfigured

inmaho · September 30, 2011, 7:14am

Hi there,

I am having exactly the same problem, but it is not related to java development. If I do make myself root (su) and call any application (emacs, …) I get the following message:

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon. See GConf configuration system for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: The connection is closed)
g_dbus_connection_real_closed: Remote peer vanished with error: Underlying GIOStream returned 0 bytes on an async read (g-io-error-quark, 0). Exiting.
Terminated

I recently changed from 11.2 to 11.4. Of course I was expecting such simple basic things to run out of the box …

CU

Ingolf

robin_listas · September 30, 2011, 11:58am

On 2011-09-30 07:16, inmaho wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I am having exactly the same problem, but it is not related to java
> development. If I do make myself root (su) and call any application
> (emacs, …) I get the following message:

Use “su -”.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

inmaho · September 30, 2011, 7:37pm

Hi Carlos,

thanks a lot, that did the trick. I take it from the man page, that this minus makes it a login shell.

Of course you can guess the next question…

What would I have to do to change the default behavior if I call su that its a login shell without giving the minus. Should I make an alias?

Again thanks

Ingolf

robin_listas · September 30, 2011, 9:48pm

On 2011-09-30 19:46, inmaho wrote:

> Of course you can guess the next question…
>
> What would I have to do to change the default behavior if I call su
> that its a login shell without giving the minus. Should I make an
> alias?

Get yourself accustomed to use the dash

Of course you can use an alias, but then you will forget about it and not
use it on another computer or system.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

Bojm · December 19, 2011, 10:45pm

This one saved my day, have been wading the google hits for this error message.

// Bojm