D-Bus

D-Bus is an inter-process communication (IPC) system for software applications; software makes use of D-Bus to communicate between services.

USE flags
Portage knows the global  USE flag for enabling support for D-Bus in other packages. Enabling this flag will pull in automatically. This is the default for desktop profiles:

Emerge
After setting at least the  global USE flag be sure update the system using   option so Portage will be sure to notice the changes:

Configuration
The main configuration files include:


 * for the system bus
 * for the session bus

OpenRC
After configuration step, start D-Bus with:

To start D-Bus at boot time, add it the default run level:

{Tip|Even without adding D-Bus to the default runlevel it often will get started by D-Bus dependent services. This should explain why D-Bus mysteriously gets started even though it has not been added formally added to a system runlevel.}}

Usage
Some useful commands are:


 * dbus-monitor --system - To monitor the activities in the system bus.
 * dbus-monitor --session - To monitor the activities in the session bus.
 * dbus-send  - To send a message. See the dbus-send man page ( man dbus-send ) for more information.

Troubleshooting
Use the dbus-monitor command to monitor the buses. Errors are also redirected to the syslog.

External resources

 * An Introduction to D-Bus (Freedesktop.org Wiki)
 * A D-Bus tutorial