gconftool-2 can't find running gconfd-2

[Aron Griffis]

Binary package hint: gconf2

$ pgrep -l gconfd-2
$ gconftool-2 --spawn
$ pgrep -l gconfd-2
23220 gconfd-2

Great, so it's running, but...

$ gconftool-2 --ping ; echo $?
2

and since gconftool-2 can't find the running gconfd-2, trying to modify settings will instead modify the database directly.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Feb 28 13:07:56 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: gconf2 2.28.0-1ubuntu5
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-14.20-generic
SourcePackage: gconf
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-14-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report. why do you need to run it with --spawn? gconf should be running

$ gconftool-2 --ping ; echo $?
0

there it works...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you get any practical user issue or are you just trying to play with some special case configuration which makes gconf not running?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

It could also be useful to describe what you tries to do there or what was your original issue which leaded you to try those commands

[Aron Griffis (agriffis)]

I'm not sure how to reply to comment #2. My sequence of commands showed that: (1) gconfd was not running at the beginning of the sequence, (2) gconftool --spawn started it properly, (3) gconftool --ping then could not find the running daemon. I'm glad that gconftool --ping works right for you, but the sequence I'm demonstrating worked well in karmic and has ceased working in lucid.

Re comment #3, regarding practical user issue, I start gconfd with "gconftool-2 --ping || gconftool-2 --spawn" in my xsession because I'm not running a full gnome setup but I want to modify some settings prior to application launch.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you have the same dbus session bus environement set for both command?

[Aron Griffis (agriffis)]

Sebastien, thanks for the clue! There is no dbus session running. This modification fixes the test case:

$ dbus-launch bash
$ gconftool-2 --ping ; echo $?
2
$ gconftool-2 --spawn
$ gconftool-2 --ping ; echo $?
$ exit

Is this a change between the versions of gconf in karmic and lucid, that it now depends on dbus? My problem is fixed and I am not complaining, but should there be more checking to prevent gconftool from starting gconf if dbus is not running?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

gconf didn't change in lucid no but it uses the session dbus bus for client, server communication but that's not a bug just the way it behaves when it can't reach the server