dbus won't start

[robspop]

I'm fairly new to FreeBSD; I'm trying it out as a long-term replacement for Solaris.

I tried installing 9.0 Beta 3 (i386) on a laptop as a trial and the basics seemed to go well so am now installing on desktop PC. I've chosen 9.0 RC1 amd64 because I wanted to try out GPT partitioning and 8.2 did not seem to support that. (Installing boot code had to be done manually in the end, but that's another story.) The PC is a fairly standard sort of thing, nothing radically new or esoteric: Abit motherboard, AMD Athlon CPU, ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics.

As part of the X setup I put the lines

  hald_enable="YES"
  dbus_enable="YES"
  local_startup="${local_startup} /usr/local/kde4/etc/rc.d"
  kdm4_enable="YES"

in /etc/rc.conf which all worked fine on laptop install.

However, when I boot I get the message

WARNING: failed to start dbus

followed by a note about /var/run/dbus/dbus.pid existing (I assume the pid file is created before the boot process realises that dbus failed to run). My question is: does this matter and, if so, how do I start it? I have grep-ed around in /var/run and can't find any further information on why it fails to start.

I have disabled the autodetect feature in xorg.conf and can now use mouse and keyboard (I am sending this from the problem PC) so I do have the basics. I also have a lot of weird behaviour that I did not experience in the earlier installation, eg:
- no way of switching between desktops on KDE (no pager icon, and trying to add it to taskbar fails, nothing happens, but other widgets install ok)
- kdm does not work
- no terminal in menu, trying to start konsole fails, though very basic xterm will run
- XFCE will not start at all

Any suggestions?

 

[SirDice]

I've chosen 9.0 RC1 amd64 because I wanted to try out GPT partitioning and 8.2 did not seem to support that.

It does, just not the installer. If you install by hand you can install 8.2 using GPT partitioning.

However, when I boot I get the message "WARNING: failed to start dbus" followed by a note about /var/run/dbus/dbus.pid existing (I assume the pid file is created before the boot process realises that dbus failed to run).

My question is: does this matter and, if so, how do I start it?

Make sure dbus isn't really running
$ pgrep -lf dbus
If there's really nothing running remove the pid file and try starting dbus again. Look for (error) messages in /var/log/messages.

 

[robspop]

Thanks for that, apparently it is running:

$ pgrep -lf dbus
2088 /usr/local/bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
2087 dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session --autolaunch 6b6787b6db52efed606685ea000005c6
1454 /usr/local/bin/dbus-daemon --system
$

That still leaves me with other problems, presumably unrelated:

- I've run genkdmconf but kdm won't start (gives error message about not finding /usr/bin/X which is not surprising as it's in /usr/local, I suppose a link would "fix" that
- I still cannot run a terminal session
- no pager for multiple desktops
- XFCE won't run
- I can't even log out of KDE, I have to kill the X server

Any further suggestions gratefully received!