D-BUS Errors

Since I had a difficult time figuring it out – I just thought I might post a “be all, end all” answer here.

There is a certain elusive DBus error that seems to occur in multiple applications, from Jockey to Bzr, to Ubuntu-One client.

The bottom of the traceback will look like this:

File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/dbus/bus.py", line 244, in get_object
follow_name_owner_changes=follow_name_owner_changes)
File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/dbus/proxies.py", line 241, in __init__
self._named_service = conn.activate_name_owner(bus_name)
File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/dbus/bus.py", line 183, in activate_name_owner
self.start_service_by_name(bus_name)
File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/dbus/bus.py", line 281, in start_service_by_name
'su', (bus_name, flags)))
File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/dbus/connection.py", line 607, in call_blocking
message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1

To put this into english – this essentially means that your system’s configuration for that particular piece of software has made it corrupt. The simple fix is simply removing the system configuration – or purging and reinstalling the application if you use a package manager.

ie:

sudo apt-get purge jockey-gtk jockey-common
sudo apt-get install jockey-gtk jockey-common

And I am 90% certain that doing this will retify your problem in most cases.