KLauncher could not be reached via D-Bus, error when calling start_service_by_desktop_path: empty

[klerfayt]

open dolphin, create a new text file "1.txt", open this text file with kate, leave dolphin opened on the desktop and wait about 30secs.
then this odd error message appears:
KLauncher could not be reached via D-Bus, error when calling start_service_by_desktop_path: empty

[Björn Streicher (bstreicher)]

I'm seeing the same problem also when starting kate e.g via the launcher using Alt+F2.

Seems not to be a specific Kubuntu issue though - it's seems to appear in openSUSE 10.3 as well: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=361509.

There is also a KDE bug for it: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=157407

[Eduardo Besembel (besembel)]

same problem after open txt file

[Oliver Jensen (ojensen)]

Michael Ummels gave a fix to this problem.
Simply open up System Settings, hit the Advanced tab and select File Associations. Find "plain" under "text", highlight Kate and hit edit. In the Application tab, change the %U to %u in the command field, and it should work =)

[Holger Schletz (holger-schletz)]

This was not sufficient for me. In the Application tab, I had to hit the "Advanced" button and set the "Register D-Bus" combo to "none".