deja-dup crashes after backup with GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop

[Chris Good]

Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-39-generic x86_64)

Error:
** (deja-dup:4045): WARNING **: StatusIcon.vala:139: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.Notifications: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process /bin/sh exited with status 1

This occurs everytime after running backup by either:
    $ gksu "deja-dup --backup"
or
    $ gksu deja-dup-preferences
    then using the Back Up Now button

The backups do seem to work.

$ apt-cache policy deja-dup
deja-dup:
  Installed: 22.0-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 22.0-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 22.0-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     22.0-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

Thanks for the report!

This appears to be an error message about not being able to show a backup notification popup. Probably because you are running under sudo and root can't access your user's DBus session. I'll mark this Invalid, as there isn't much I can do about it.

[Chris Good (chris-good)]

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the info but I don't understand. The backup runs as root and shows me a GUI window while the backup is running, but are you saying there is something different about the GUI notification window at the end???
If this is the case, then couldn't you show some sort of a MSG in the GUI window to indicate success, with a pause of say 10 seconds so people can read it when it is running as root?

It seems a great shame that this nice tool be limited to backups of just 1 user's data when it actually seems to work fine when running as root, except for a success or failure notification.

Thanks for your time!

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

Yeah, there is something different about the GUI notification at the end. It is triggered via DBus, and root just can't use the user's DBus session.

The true fix for this is to add policykit support to gvfs, so that you don't have to run the whole of deja-dup as root, but rather, deja-dup can just ask for the root password when it sees a file it can't read/write. See bug https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490200

I could add a temporary message in the GUI when run as root, as you suggest. But truth be told, running as root is not really recommended. It's a mode I don't want to formally add support for.