Fedora – Unable to access systemd –user due to DBus access permissions

d-busfedorasystemd

I'm trying to setup a service account using systemd units to manage the actual service + supporting code. However, it looks like the systemd user daemon isn't working properly.

$ systemctl --user
Failed to get D-Bus connection: Permission denied

EDIT: I've made some progress by ensuring I have an interactive shell (using su – instead of su to switch to the service account). This has helped, but it looks like my D-Bus woes aren't over:

$ systemctl --user
Failed to get D-Bus connection: No such file or directory

I'm trying to suss out what I need to do to make sure this user does have dbus access. Adding them to the dbus group has had little benefit.

$ groups
printing lp rpc dbus users chrony ipausers

I'm running Fedora Core 23

Best Answer

If I understand correctly, you are mixing up two different concepts:

  • The main systemd system instance is used to start system services under any system user;
  • The user specific systemd instances are there for interactive user that wish to run session services.

System services do not get a user instance as they are managed by the system instance. In your case, I think you should write your unit as system units and have them managed directly by systemd PID 1.

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