epiphany does not work on a remote desktop session

[Jos Dehaes]

When I open a remote session with NX, or just ssh into a box, starting epiphany fails with a DBUS error. 3.00$ ssh jos@quattro
jos@quattro's password:
Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.
Linux quattro 2.6.15-20-amd64-k8 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Apr 4 18:03:46 UTC 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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Last login: Thu Apr 13 16:15:04 2006 from 152.62.109.21
jos@quattro:~$ epiphany

** (epiphany-browser:13352): WARNING **: Unable to connect to session bus: Unable to determine the address of the message bus
jos@quattro:~$

Galeon or firefox do work with remote sessions.

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

Marking as major, since it renders the program unusable on a remote session

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

A quick note: it does work when run at the physical console.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find.

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

I don't agree this is a duplicate, since on my system dbus *is* installed and running:

jos@quattro:~$ ps -ef | grep dbus
104 4220 1 0 Apr06 ? 00:00:15 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system
jos 16806 16760 0 Apr09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session x-session-manager
jos 16809 1 0 Apr09 ? 00:00:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jos 16810 1 0 Apr09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session x-session-manager
jos 16112 16063 0 14:06 pts/7 00:00:00 grep dbus

This is part of a larger dbus problem, since at login with NX (probably also with regular xdmcp, haven't checked) I also get a warning from gnome-power-manager about the session bus, and gnome-power is not available either in the remote session (but that is not really a problem).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is it running on the box and for the user where you run epiphany or on your local one?

[Sebastian Dröge (slomo)]

But you probably don't have a session bus for the remote session running, Jos. Try "dbus-launch epiphany", this should be a working workaround

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

I don't agree this is a duplicate, since on my system dbus *is* installed and running:

jos@quattro:~$ ps -ef | grep dbus
104 4220 1 0 Apr06 ? 00:00:15 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system
jos 16806 16760 0 Apr09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session x-session-manager
jos 16809 1 0 Apr09 ? 00:00:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 8 --print-address 6 --session
jos 16810 1 0 Apr09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session x-session-manager
jos 16112 16063 0 14:06 pts/7 00:00:00 grep dbus

This is part of a larger dbus problem, since at login with NX (probably also with regular xdmcp, haven't checked) I also get a warning from gnome-power-manager about the session bus, and gnome-power is not available either in the remote session (but that is not really a problem).

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

Oops, repost an old comment... please ignore that one...

The local machine is windows. The remote machine is dapper. So that dbus-daemon is running on the remote machine (the one where I start epiphany).

I probably also have a local session running on the remote system as well, maybe this has something to do with it?

I can confirm that the dbus-launch workaround works, but I still think it should be fixed...

[Sebastian Dröge (slomo)]

So we have two possible fixes for this problem:
a) starting a dbus session bus when someone logs in and none is running yet (which will fix other programs failing because of no dbus session bus too)
b) fixing epiphany to fail gracefully when no dbus session bus is running

i think b) should be the correct fix as not everybody wants to spawn a session bus when someone logs in ;)

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

I found a better workaround on the freeNX mailing list: I now specify

COMMAND_START_GNOME="dbus-launch gnome-session"

in /etc/nxserver/node.conf

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

I don't agree with the proposed solution (b). This renders epiphany unusable with remote logins.

What's wrong with starting a session bus when it's needed?

[Sebastian Dröge (slomo)]

Why does it make epiphany unuseable with remote logins? afaik dbus is only needed to talk with an existing epiphany instance and nothing else... so only this feature won't work when no session bus is running

running a session bus with every remote login seems to be wrong because I for example never needed one and don't see why one should be started although I don't need one ;)
But when you already have a complete gnome session in your remote session dbus should really be started... i wonder why it isn't started with gnome-session... Sebastien?

[Jos Dehaes (jos-dehaes)]

Epiphany refuses to start with no session daemon running, so it is unusable.

There are 2 use-cases for me:
- a full remote desktop login (using NX, or XDMCP) -> use the dbus-launch gnome-session trick
- ssh with X forwarding -> use dbus-launch epiphany

so I now have a workaround for both, but for users who are new to linux, or don't know the workaround, epiphany won't work, and they won't know how to fix it. This should all be transparent to the user, this trickery shouldn't be needed.

In the case that you log into a remote box with SSH and X forwarding, starting epiphany should launch a dbus session daemon if it really needs one. An alternative is to run it in "standalone mode" or something when it's run this way?

In the case of a full remote desktop login, gnome-session should spawn the dbus session daemon, not the other way around in my opinion.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

There is differents points to that situation:

- epiphany needs to know if there is an instance running because the profile code from mozilla, chpe (upstream) said that on epiphany some days ago:
"<chpe> that's a gecko problem, unfortunately it doesn't support multiple displays in the same process :| which reduces the problem to the no-concurrent-access-to-profile problem"
- the "one instance" code from epiphany is based on dbus at the moment
- dbus could be autospawned when needed, that's a dbus bug (or feature request)
- starting it with gnome-session could make sense, there is already some other discussions running about that but I would prefer the "autospawn when needed" approch for that