Comment 13 for bug 295405

You comment that "apparently /lib/dbus-1.0/dbus-daemon-launch-helper isn't executable for the user "messagebus"" caused me to look at /etc/passwd and /etc/group on the computer with these problems, and I found a major problem.

The entry in /etc/passwd was:

    messagebus:x:104:112::/var/run/dbus:/bin/false

which put the messagebus user in group 112.

But the entry in /etc/group was:

messagebus:x:111:

I checked the computer that wasn't having the problems, and the messagebus user was in the expected group. Therefore, I hand edited the user messagebus entry to be a member of the messagebus group, and as far as I can tell all of the problems I listed on 11/25 are fixed -- though I won't know until tomorrow in the cron job to run the update manager is working. I also was able to reinstall network-manager, which had be previously unmounting my primary disk during startup.

I can think of no reason why I would have ever edited the messagebus entry in /etc/passwd, and it would be out of character for me to mis-edit/mis-configure the user. Someone might want to investigate whether this mis-configuration of the messagebus user is prevalent, as I have heard that many people had trouble with the network-manager after upgrading to Intrepid, and the bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/224828 which many people encountered was fixed by this as well.

QUESTION: Is there a chance of files existing where the group permissions are for the wrong gid?

In any case. Thank you very much for your patience and persistence.