Comment 15 for bug 552404

This just happened to me trying to update an LTSP client chroot:

Setting up dbus (1.2.16-2ubuntu4.1) ...
The system user `messagebus' already exists. Exiting.
Failed to open connection to "system" message bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing dbus (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of consolekit:
 consolekit depends on dbus (>= 1.1.2); however:
  Package dbus is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing consolekit (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 dbus
 consolekit
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:
Setting up dbus (1.2.16-2ubuntu4.1) ...
The system user `messagebus' already exists. Exiting.
Failed to open connection to "system" message bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing dbus (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of consolekit:
 consolekit depends on dbus (>= 1.1.2); however:
  Package dbus is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing consolekit (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 dbus
 consolekit
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done