Gnucash not starting properly- probably gconf & dbus related

[David Rowe]

Have just encountered a problem that seems to have come and gone several
times in the last year It seems to be back again:

After upgrading several ports, Gnucash does not start up properly. Two
warning windows appear saying:

"An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for
Gnucash. Some of your configuration settings may not work properly"
&
"Cannot find default values: The configuration data used to specify
default values for Gnucash cannot be found in the default system
locations. Without this data GnuCash will still operate properly but it
may require some extra time to setup. Do you wish to setup the
configuration data?"

The terminal log reports:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
wombat-on-outback:~ david$ gnucash
gnc.bin-Message: main: binreloc relocation support was disabled at
configure time.

Xlib:  extension "RANDR" missing on display "/tmp/launch-ruNqs3/:0".
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a
socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

After this you can get Gnucash to run but you have to set up all
preferences and no preferences are saved for the next run.

In the past, the problems seem to be caused - not by GnuCash itself -
but by Gconf not being able to interact properly with dbus.

My normal Gnucash installation had been working OK for several months.
Configuration details:
MacBookPro (Intel CPU),  MacOS Leopard 10.5.8, MacPorts 1.8.1

About 2 weeks ago after some routine updates the above problem occurred
again. I noticed that dbus had just been updated from 1.2.14_1 to
1.2.16_1 so I tried reverting to 1.2.14_1 and the problem seemed to go
away. (You have to restart MacOS to restart the dbus daemon). I could
live with that situation.

However I have decided to transition to Snow Leopard and so I created a
new MacOS 10.6.1 system on an external drive and then created a new,
clean  MacPorts installation to go with it. Gnucash was the first
application I installed and it does NOT work - with the above symptoms.
I tried retro installing dbus 1.2.14_1, but this time it did not cure
the problem.
The levels for the relevant ports on Snow Leopard are:  gnucash @2.2.9,
Revision 3,  gconf @2.26.2,  dbus @1.2.16, Revision 1

So -
Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Does anyone have GnuCash running under Snow Leopard + MacPorts 1.8.1 ?
Can anyone suggest a fix for the above problem?

David Rowe


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[detourdog]

On Oct 28, 2009, at 7:03 PM, David Rowe wrote:

So -
Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Does anyone have GnuCash running under Snow Leopard + MacPorts 1.8.1 ?
Can anyone suggest a fix for the above problem?

I  just spent a couple of days trying to get it to work on the above  +quartz. I got it to build and launch but all the characters came out as rectangles.

So I downloaded the .dmg from sourceforge and it was a drag and drop install to applications for a quartz install.

Works like a charm.

Ben

David Rowe


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[David Rowe]

Thanks Ben & Olaf - now I have two solutions!

Ben - I hadn't realised that a bundled .dmg was now available. I downloaded and installed it and it works just fine. I now rely on Gnucash for my accounts and a bundled solution is more dependable, so I will probably stick with it.

however

Olaf - your comments gave me the clue to what I was doing wrong - it was my mistake:
I got a bit weary with sudo-ing every port command in a long session of MacPorts maintenance - so I got into the habit of starting with 'sudo bash' and then working as superuser for the session. (Yes I know the dangers but I am used to being careful). I had indeed noted the comments in the port install log about executing the commands to activate the two startup items. However, as you say, the first item must be activated as root but the second as user. What I was doing was activating both as root and presumably the result of that was that the user-mode application was unable to talk to the root dbus daemon. When I killed the dbus process and reactivated exactly as specified in the log, then Gnucash started just fine. After restarting MacOS X, Gnucash still works OK so presumably the startup items are now right.
PS - It was the X11 version I built.

Thanks to both of you for your help

David Rowe

------------------------------------------------------------

Ben Greenfield wrote:
. . .

I  just spent a couple of days trying to get it to work on the above  +quartz. I got it to build and launch but all the characters came out as rectangles.

So I downloaded the .dmg from sourceforge and it was a drag and drop install to applications for a quartz install.

Olaf Foellinger wrote:

. . .
  

here GnuCash quartz is running fine as a quartz build with macports. The
error message above shows indeed problems with dbus. At the end of the
installation of dbus a message appears to tell about two startup items
that must be activated (one as root, one as user). After doing this
gnucash works fine here. Do oyu have problems with the X11 or the quartz
version?

Gru� Olaf
  

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