For more details check http://ofi.hakore.com/ if you use DBUS-0.22 please apply patches from contrib/patches/dbus-all-services.patch to DBUS source. To get DBUS operational you need to start system bus service at system startup: # dbus-daemon-1 --system And then for every user session: $ dbus-daemon-1 --session process running in you system to work it propertly. you can run it with while you login with script like this: if test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ; then ## if not found, launch a new one eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session` echo "D-BUS per-session daemon address is: $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" fi or I do prefer start GNOME with "dbus-launch gnome-session" because it allow to activate X based services my /etc/X11/Xinit/Xclients: ------------------------------------------------------------ start -- # these files are left sitting around by RunWM. rm -f /tmp/mwmrc* 2>/dev/null # check to see if the user has a preferred desktop [ -f /etc/sysconfig/desktop ] && . /etc/sysconfig/desktop [ -f ~/.wm_style ] && PREFERRED="`cat ~/.wm_style | tr a-z A-Z`" GSESSION="`which gnome-session 2>/dev/null`" STARTKDE="`which startkde 2>/dev/null`" case "$PREFERRED" in GNOME) [ -x "$GSESSION" ] && exec "/usr/bin/dbus-launch" "$GSESSION" ;; KDE) [ -x "$STARTKDE" ] && exec "$STARTKDE" ;; esac # Last, try plain window manager exec /usr/X11R6/bin/RunWM ------------------------------------------------------------ end --- ### NOTES #### #/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/jabber "" #dbus-send --type="method_call" --dest='org.freedesktop.im.GG' /org/freedesktop/im org.freedesktop.im.openChat string:'gg://5074881'