Boot stuck at Failed to start D-Bus System Message Bus

I have a Manaro XFCE virtual machine (VMware Workstation) that fails to boot after a brief power outage.
The first time I booted it up it did a fsck automatically cleaning some inodes, but after cleaning them it failed to boot. Now every time I boot it I get the following output and after that nothing happens.

[FAILED] Failed to start D-Bus System Message Bus
[FAILED] Failed to start Light Display Manager

I then booted to runlevel 3 by editing the linux grub line and adding 3 at the end so now I’m booted in runlevel 3 but I have no clue what to fix to get runlevel 5 booting again.
Does anyone have any suggestions what might need fixing?

I wanted to add a screenshot but this forum doesn’t allow me to do that… :frowning:

That the VM fails to boot after a power outage should suggest to you that damage has been done – whether it is actually recoverable, is anybody’s guess.

Please do not post screenshots of text, even when you’re able to. :eyes:

Your text isn’t very clear; at least, not the portion quoted. However, if I understand what you were trying to say; you are successfully booting via runlevel 3 and don’t know how to determine what the problem is or if it’s repairable. Either that, or you don’t know how to stop booting runlevel 5 (in which case, simply delete the 3). I’ll assume the former.

Firstly, I suggest booting with the Manjaro Installer DVD/ISO/USB instead of using runlevel 3. This will give you access to tools you may need to diagnose and/or repair the problem(s), if possible. As an extra bonus, you can use Firefox in the Live environment to access the forum, so that you can give any requested information directly.

From the Live environment, please post some system information so that everyone is on the same page;

Output of:

inxi --admin --verbosity=8 --filter --no-host --width

should be a good start; and perhaps some logs;

journalctl --boot=-1 --priority=3 --catalog --no-pager

You may need to enter a chroot environment in order to produce logs from your system, and not the Live environment. This environment would also be used when attempting to recover your system.

I’ll go out on a limb here and assume you might have no idea what I’m talking about. So, to bridge that gap just a little, please see the following tutorials which describe in more detail some of what you should be prepared for.

At this time, what is actually damaged is unknown. If your system can be saved is unknown. Until enough information has been provided, it may be difficult for anyone to accurately pinpoint the problem. It’s equally possible that the VM itself might be damaged. Nobody knows (yet).

I think it only fair to point out that it might be easiest to simply create a new VM. Which OS is the VM hosted on?


This is because you haven’t interracted with the forum sufficiently to increase your privileges; The Manjaro forum uses Discourse software which employs a Trust Level system; this will change after some active participation.

See Understanding Discourse Trust Levels


As an infrequent forum user, please take some time to familiarise yourself with Forum requirements; in particular, the many ways to use the forum to your benefit.

To that end, some or all these links may be invaluable:

Last, but not least, the Update Announcements, which you should check frequently for important update related information.

An issue may be directly related to a particular update; these announcements should generally be checked before posting a request for support.

I hope this is helpful. Cheers.


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Ok, found the problem, a few days ago I had modified the /etc/machine-id file.
Since then the VM had not been rebooted.

Now because of the modified machine-id journald was not starting, causing policykit and in turn dbus not to start.

I have now restored the original machine-id file and XFCE starts up correctly in runlevel 5.

I’m seriously concerned that systemd and/or journald depend on an immutable machine-id, this is quite orwellian. I’m starting to think I have to switch to a systemd-free distro.

@soundofthunder thanks you for your attempt to help me.

That doesn’t seem consistent with the description given:

Nonetheless, I’m glad you’re operational.

Oh, and…

Good luck.

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