Mac OS/X Up and Gnucash startup errors

[David Reiser]

On Feb 27, 2009, at 10:56 AM, Steve Drach wrote:

>> A lot of people (including me) have seen this problem after
>> installing/upgrading via MacPorts, so it might be a good idea to  
>> check
>> what they've gone through, even though you're using Fink.
>>
>> http://trac.macports.org/
>> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macports-users/
>
> OK.  I guess I have some weekend digging around to do.
>
>> One possible solution is to run this, making sure not to do it as
>> sudo:
>>
>> launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-
>> session.plist
>
> I don't have that agent in my LaunchAgents directory
>
> BTW, what is dbus?  I believe David Reiser also mentioned it.
>
dbus is an Inter Process Communication daemon (thing that runs in the  
background and listens for requests from applications to talk to other  
applications). dbus is how gconf handles stored information like  
default location of windows, the last check format file you used, etc.  
Some of those stored settings also need gnome-settings-daemon, which  
isn't behaving well in gnome 2.24 (at least with dbus 1.2.12 set up  
with launchd instead of x11). gconf did its IPC stuff some other way  
than dbus before version 2.23.

You don't have the LaunchAgent mentioned because the fink dbus  
maintainer kept the agent within fink's heirarchy. Fink policy frowns  
severely on writing things to places like /Library. Macports  
willingness to write that agent plist there does have some undesirable  
side effects.

If 'fink list dbus' shows you have dbus 1.2.12-8 installed, then you  
have the latest available. And it is expecting to use launchd to set  
up. It succeeds for me for the most part -- I essentially never get  
the dialogs you see. But I don't get my selected default font (needs  
gnome-settings-daemon working right). The unreleased-in-fink gnome- 
settings-daemon 2.25.90 behaves better -- it's possible to force it to  
run, but it won't launch automatically.

For grasping at straws, you might look to see if your version of  
gconf2 is up to date.

There are lots of reported problems with parts of gnome working not as  
intended with dbus both on the mac and under linux. But the errors you  
see should be fixable with current versions available.

Dave
--
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net