"sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist" should not sudo?

[jim@…]

I've been having a problem that looked very much like #17950; the core symptom was:

Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!

(process:15731): GConf-CRITICAL **: Could not connect to session bus: Not enough memory

Reading through #17950, I got the sense that I wasn't connecting to gconf and was able to confirm this using gconf-editor, first running it as my normal user, then as root. The former gave the same errors as above; the latter ran fine and gave me access to the gconf database. I further confirmed this by running launchctl getenv DBUS_LAUNCHD_SESSION_BUS_SOCKET as my normal user (which provided no response) and as root (which provided the proper value).

Here's what I did to get gconf and dbus working:

1. sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist
2. sudo chown my_user:staff /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist
3. launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist

After that, all works well. This is in line with the observation in comment:ticket:17950:86 which advises against "sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist".

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

Dup of #19804.