GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; durring ssh X11 forwarding

[Keith Buel]

Binary package hint: gconf

I am connecting from a Jaunty computer to another computer running Jaunty, using ssh X11 forwarding.

When I try to open any application such as gedit, I get the following error over and over again:

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-QS6NzEDBEh: Connection refused)

The application does not open.

Client machine:
lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

Server:
lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Also, please answer these questions:
* Is this reproducible?
* If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

This will greatly aid us in tracking down your problem and resolving this bug.

[Keith Buel (kbuel)]

Yes it is reproducible.
I'm not sure if I have found exactly when it happens, but its basically happens i'd say 90% of the time. I've restarted the server many times, and one time it worked and I was able to bring up gedit, and basically every other app without issue.

I'm not really sure what specific steps I should list, but this is what I'm doing:

> ssh -X 192.168.1.7

then i type to run gedit:

> gedit

and then I get this over again... (just did it again)

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-DJcOQ2vvIQ: Connection refused)

please let me know if I can add any more valuable information

[Keith Buel (kbuel)]

I looked into this more and did some research. There was a file in ~/.dbus/session-bus that was owned by root. I changed the ownership to me and the error went away, and the program popped up. Below is what I did:

keith@mediabox:~$ gedit
GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-kRVlcAThBv: Connection refused)
^C
keith@mediabox:~$
keith@mediabox:~$
keith@mediabox:~$ cd .dbus/session-bus/
keith@mediabox:~/.dbus/session-bus$ ls -ltrh
total 12K
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 476 2009-04-24 10:41 ee707f95157e78e7eaaa1e9149f0ecc7-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 keith keith 476 2009-04-26 03:24 ee707f95157e78e7eaaa1e9149f0ecc7-11
-rw-r--r-- 1 keith keith 464 2009-04-27 19:31 ee707f95157e78e7eaaa1e9149f0ecc7-0
keith@mediabox:~/.dbus/session-bus$ sudo chown keith:keith ee707f95157e78e7eaaa1e9149f0ecc7-10
[sudo] password for keith:
keith@mediabox:~/.dbus/session-bus$ ls -ltrh
total 12K
-rw-r--r-- 1 keith keith 476 2009-04-24 10:41 ee707f95157e78e7eaaa1e9149f0ecc7-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 keith keith 476 2009-04-26 03:24 ee707f95157e78e7eaaa1e9149f0ecc7-11
-rw-r--r-- 1 keith keith 464 2009-04-27 19:31 ee707f95157e78e7eaaa1e9149f0ecc7-0
keith@mediabox:~/.dbus/session-bus$ gedit
^C
keith@mediabox:~/.dbus/session-bus$

It seems like an application run by root created that file in the session-bus folder... I don't know enough about dbus to understand why this is.... also hopefully i didn't hurt anything by changing the ownership to me. I doubt it because root would still be able touch it.

This was a clean install, and i did very minimal things, so I'm wondering what would have written that file there. I this a bug that a program would have created a file in my home directory settings with root permissions?

.... I guess i need to learn more about dbus....

[blackest_knight (blackest-knight)]

Thanks very much for reporting this all the files were owned by root and changing them to my user name solved the problem.

[Václav Šmilauer (eudoxos)]

I had the same problem and setting the right owner on ~/.dbus solved the problem for me. The issue is therefore resolved, except that gconf/dbus perhaps should say aloud what is wrong by themselves.

[Václav Šmilauer (eudoxos)]

The issue is resolved and wasn't bug in gconf. Therefore "invalid".

[Keith Buel (kbuel)]

Whether or not this is a bug with gconf, I would still consider this a bug. Something is changing/setting the permissions of those files, which inhibits basic functionality.

I don't think that a basic user should have to know that they need to change the permissions back to their own in the ~/.dbus folder.

If this is not a bug with gconf, how would I determine what package is setting these permissions and therefore has the bug?

[daemacles (daemacles)]

I had the same problem, was fixed according to Keith's instructions on changing the owner. I agree that this problem shouldn't be happening with such fundamental system components like dbus and gconf.

[Jeremy Pyne (jeremy-pyne)]

I can confirm that this problem is new to Jaunty. Broke after the dist-upgrade. File permissions were wet to root, changed them back to me and dbus functions work over ssh tunnels again.

[Jacob (incredible)]

I had the same problem, and fixed it the same way. I'm running Intrepid.

[K. M. Masum Habib (masum-habib)]

I can confirm same problem in my Janunty box and fixed it in the same way. One interesting thing is that I have 10 identical machines running Jaunty. Only the machines I have updated packages, from Internet after installation by synaptic, shows this problem. But the machines that I have the default packages from ubuntu CD does not show this problem.

[Joe McPherson (alicesresturantm)]

There are three cause the gconfd not making connection. 1. is a stale slot, 2. that ORBit-2 does can not communicate over tcp/ip protocal and 3 there are multiple gconfd daemons running.

1. Test that there are no stale slots. The above responces give several ways to do this. Each of the above should be checked.

2. Verify your kernel supports TCP/IP. If it doesn't correct.

3. Verify there is only one gconfd running. At the terminal prompt issue the following command #find / -iname "gconfd"
     if you get more that one gconf for your system, remove one of them.

The above steps should solve all the running GConf-2.26.1

[moogle (dumuguo)]

I also face this problem when i use "root" to login(i am boring to type sudo everytime).
But if i use another user to login, and use "sudo gedit", everything looks fine.

[kantor (kantorzsolt)]

I posted a solution for this issue and probably this gonna solve your problem too:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gconf/+bug/336660

[Adam Petaccia (mighmos)]

Sorry for reopening this, but just because it may or not be a bug in GConf, it is still most certainly a bug in Ubuntu. Flag it SSH, DBus, GConf, or whatever, but X tunnelling in Ubuntu is flat out broken. If the GConf team decides its not their bug, can it get forwarded to the appropriate team? This is most certainly not invalid (running Karmic on both machines).

On a more constructive note, would adding the code to ensure that the directories are correctly owned to 'tools/dbus-launch-x11.c' be correct? (I am willing to look into this)

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Not a D-Bus issue

[Mikhail Veygman (mveygman)]

This bug may be coming in a few incarnations but it seems to be a bug with the DBUS system on Jaunty

The original error reported doesn't go away with the latest updates and is actually being reported on quite a bit of other GNOME programs when trying to display back to the Jaunty Host.

I have tested this with: gedit, gvim, gnome-terminal, gconf-editor, etc.

All the files in the .dbus/session-bus are owned by me, but I still get the errors and gnome-terminal completely fails to startup.

Same issue affects KDE programs such as kate.

This issue does not exist when the display host is Intrepid Ibex.

[Mikhail Veygman (mveygman)]

A little further investigation revealed the following. This issue doesn't appear to be taking place when running commands remotely from Intrepid displaying on Jaunty and from Jaunty displaying on Intrepid but when running Jaunty->Jaunty bug appears.

Also,

If you try running on a host host1 running Jaunty the following:

ssh -X host1
gvim

The bug doesn't show up.

[Ed Lebert (edlebert)]

This is a very frustrating bug. I am using a 9.10 client connecting to a 9.04 server. Every week or so I will get this error. Both systems are fully patched.

[Mikhail Veygman (mveygman)]

One thing to check and did the trick for me:

Remove .dbus directory in the $HOME.

[Murat Uenalan (muenalan)]

Today, 9.10, same bug, same problem. Can we raise the priority ?

[Alfredo Pironti (alfredo.pironti)]

I was affected by this bug, and I can confirm that on the remote machine the ~/.dbus directory was owned by root. By changing the owner to "myself" the problem is solved.

For some reason some people got the ~/.dbus ownership unwillingly changed, can't tell in which package, but this is certainly a bug. The remote machine started as a 9.04 and was upgraded to 9.10. For you interest, the local machine (which has correct permissions "by default") started as a 8.04 and was upgraded to 9.10. Maybe 9.04 was shipped with this error?

[WallaceM (wallace-maxted)]

I am getting this same issue with a clean install of 10.04.

ssh -c blowfish -CX user@server thunderbird

results in the following information in a pop-up window ...

Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details — 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-O3Y0oQrtAn: Connection refused)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details — 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-O3Y0oQrtAn: Connection refused)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details — 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-O3Y0oQrtAn: Connection refused)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details — 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-O3Y0oQrtAn: Connection refused)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details — 1: Failed to get connection to session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-O3Y0oQrtAn: Connection refused)

Then thunderbird opens and works, but fails to launch helper applications prompting for an application to run.

When I exit and restart thunderbird the same error occurs again referring to the same file (/tmp/dbus-O3Y0oQrtAn) - there is no such file in /tmp or indeed any file with a dbus prefix.

[Jarrett Miller (spook)]

I just ran in to this today on a fresh Ubunutu Server 10.04.1 AMD64 install fully patched.
Both my ~/.dbus directory and ~/.esd_auth were owned by root:root for some reason.

I had not seen the thing about .esd_auth reported so I just wanted to let you know. Maybe that will point to the component that is setting these permissions incorrectly.

Cheers

[gord-s (gord-sssnaps)]

This occurs for me on 10.04.1, several server machines and a couple of Ubuntu desktops, acting as remote (ssh-into these machines) and local (ssh from these machines). So far, on all 10.04.1 machines from fresh install, and all updates from previous versions (some sequentially from 7.04, some LTS-only from 8.04) every machine has been affected at some point, some several times over since install/upgrade.
These machines are x86 and AMD64

[mazerj (james-mazer)]

I just updated my 10.04 LTS 64-bit laptop 30mins ago and now suddenly am getting these errors from thunderbird, gedit etc. Removing ~/.dbus and letting it regenerate at no effect. To summarize:

   % ssh -X host gedit

generates a stream of GConf errors,

  host% gedit

(that is run locally on host) generates no errors at all -- errors only arise when coming in remotely.

[Keith Buel (kbuel)]

@mazerj

Instead of removing ~/.dbus try changing the ownership of that directory (and sub directories/files) to your self:

$ sudo chown -R <username>:<username> ~/.dbus/

When you removed the directory, it might have been regenerated with some as root for some reason (which might help with diagnosing why this is happening)

[mazerj (james-mazer)]

I actually tried that first, with no luck.
/jamie

On 10/28/2010 01:32 PM, Keith Buel wrote:
> @mazerj
>
> Instead of removing ~/.dbus try changing the ownership of that directory
> (and sub directories/files) to your self:
>
> $ sudo chown -R<username>:<username> ~/.dbus/
>
>
> When you removed the directory, it might have been regenerated with some as root for some reason (which might help with diagnosing why this is happening)
>

--
James Mazer
Department of Neurobiology
Yale School of Medicine
phone: [phone]
fax: [phone]

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release - Oneiric Ocelot. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gconf (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for dbus (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]