Failed to start d-bus system message bus

I just updated yesterday, and I cannot boot now. I am able to go into grub, but afterwards, it just shows “failed to start d-bus system message bus” “failed to start Network manager” and “fail to start light display manager”

After those fails, there is a “dependency failed for user login management”, “light display manager” and “network manager.”

So yeah, I’m stuck. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

if it helps, what I have done already is to edit the grub boot to get to tty.
then, I tried to systemctl stuff, but the bus connection is not there.

Complete shot in the dark here but is there a chance that the SATA mode has been changed in the BIOS of the machine? I don’t recall the error messages but I had a Dell laptop that had a wonky CMOS battery and it would occasionally reset the SATA mode in the BIOS from ACHI to IDE and/or Raid. When it did the thing would fail to start. For some reason, this is ringing a bell with me that it might be the same thing.

To find out, enter your computer’s BIOS setup–it varies on how this is done from one machine to the next; on the Dell I’d tap F2 over and over again while it powered on until I saw ‘Entering Setup…’ appear. I think it’s F10 on HP machines. On others I’ve worked on it’s been the delete key. If you have–or can find–the motherboard manual it’ll tell you. Then, once in there, look for the SATA or hard drive mode setting. Try different ones noting what it was set to initially and see if anything changes. If I’m wrong and it isn’t this just put it back to what it was first set to.

If there’s more than one drive in the system it may be worth trying the different modes with each of them.

Again though, this is just a guess.

kev.

Hi, can you see what is present in your dbus folder/whether it is present (enter ls /var/run/dbus in your grub rescue terminal?

I just tried this, but bios was already in ACHI. I tried switching it to “compatibility” and it just put me at root where I can’t do anything. Thanks though!

Okay, must be something else on the go then.

this thing called “system_bus_socket=” in pink.

Does manually starting dbus from the grub console work? If so, you may be able to boot from there.

Hey, I have the same issue! I updated 2 days ago, and haven’t been able to boot since. I’m getting the same string of error messages ("failed to start d-bus system message bus” etc). I also checked the BIOS and it was already in ACHI. Let me know if you find a fix and I’ll let you know if I figure anything out.

I’m not sure how to do that lol.

Hey y’all. Thanks for all the help. Unfortunately, I was not able to locate the problem. I was on i3 community, but I have moved everything to the official xfce build. It’s sad that I’ve had no issues with the i3 community for ~5 years, but it’s time to say goodbye. QQ.

Hi, Manjaro uses systemd for initialisation and service management - I’m by no means an expert on it, so it might be worth having a look at the page here for a good reference: Arch systemd. To start a [unit], you would enter systemctl start [unit]. In this case here, [unit] I think is called dbus so the entry would be systemctl start dbus.

I am unsure whether this would address your issue, D-Bus not starting may well just be a symptom of another issue, but it would be the first thing I would try if a service failed on startup and see if I could glean anything from that. Best of luck!

I’ve also got this same issue after updating. This is on a friend’s computer who is halfway across the country, so I’ve been doing a lot of remote troubleshooting. What I’ve got so far:

If you edit the boot options and add a " 3" to the end of “linux” boot line you’ll be able to at least get a console. From there, you can fix the networking with netctl reenable <interface>

Unfortunately, I’ve still had no luck getting dbus running.

systemctl start dbus.service

Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: Started D-Bus System Message Bus.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host dbus-daemon[1962]: Failed to start message bus: Failed to drop capabilities: Success
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: Started D-Bus System Message Bus.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host dbus-daemon[1964]: Failed to start message bus: Failed to drop capabilities: Success
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: Started D-Bus System Message Bus.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host dbus-daemon[1966]: Failed to start message bus: Failed to drop capabilities: Success
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: Started D-Bus System Message Bus.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host dbus-daemon[1968]: Failed to start message bus: Failed to drop capabilities: Success
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: dbus.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 09 23:47:56 remote-host systemd[1]: Failed to start D-Bus System Message Bus.

Pretty sure this is at the root of everything else failing.

Just to add a little more, I’ve managed to at least get dbus started.

mv /run/dbus/system_bus_socket /run/dbus/system_bus_socket.old
chown dbus /run/dbus

Then modify the file /usr/lib/systemd/system/dbus.service and add in the following under the [Service] section:

User: dbus

This has dbus launch as the dbus user directly instead of launching as root and dropping privileges. This is a bit of a hackish workaround, and I don’t know what else it might break. I can’t find anything on that error message.

Yeah, I can’t even get systemctl to start.