2015 Collabora Ltd. This man page is distributed under the same terms as dbus-update-activation-environment (MIT/X11). There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. dbus-update-activation-environment 1 User Commands D-Bus @DBUS_VERSION@ dbus-update-activation-environment update environment used for D-Bus session services dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd --verbose --all VAR VAR=VAL dbus-update-activation-environment updates the list of environment variables used by dbus-daemon --session when it activates session services without using systemd. With the --systemd option, if an instance of systemd --user is available on D-Bus, it also updates the list of environment variables used by systemd --user when it activates user services, including D-Bus session services for which dbus-daemon has been configured to delegate activation to systemd. This is very similar to the import-environment command provided by systemctl1). Variables that are special to dbus-daemon or systemd may be set, but their values will be overridden when a service is started. For instance, it is not useful to add DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS to dbus-daemon's activation environment, although it might still be useful to add it to systemd's activation environment. --all Set all environment variables present in the environment used by dbus-update-activation-environment. --systemd Set environment variables for systemd user services as well as for traditional D-Bus session services. --verbose Output messages to standard error explaining what dbus-update-activation-environment is doing. VAR If VAR is present in the environment of dbus-update-activation-environment, set it to the same value for D-Bus services. Its value must be UTF-8 (if not, it is skipped with a warning). If VAR is not present in the environment, this argument is silently ignored. VAR=VAL Set VAR to VAL, which must be UTF-8. dbus-update-activation-environment is primarily designed to be used in Linux distributions' X11 session startup scripts, in conjunction with the "user bus" design. To propagate DISPLAY and XAUTHORITY to dbus-daemon and, if present, systemd, and propagate DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS to systemd: dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd \ DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY XAUTHORITY To propagate all environment variables except XDG_SEAT, XDG_SESSION_ID and XDG_VTNR to dbus-daemon (and, if present, systemd) for compatibility with legacy X11 session startup scripts: # in a subshell so the variables remain set in the # parent script ( unset XDG_SEAT unset XDG_SESSION_ID unset XDG_VTNR dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd --all ) dbus-update-activation-environment exits with status 0 on success, EX_USAGE (64) on invalid command-line options, EX_OSERR (71) if unable to connect to the session bus, or EX_UNAVAILABLE (69) if unable to set the environment variables. Other nonzero exit codes might be added in future versions. DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS, XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and/or DISPLAY are used to find the address of the session bus. dbus-daemon does not provide a way to unset environment variables after they have been set (although systemd does), so dbus-update-activation-environment does not offer this functionality either. POSIX does not specify the encoding of non-ASCII environment variable names or values and allows them to contain any non-zero byte, but neither dbus-daemon nor systemd supports environment variables with non-UTF-8 names or values. Accordingly, dbus-update-activation-environment assumes that any name or value that appears to be valid UTF-8 is intended to be UTF-8, and ignores other names or values with a warning. Please send bug reports to the D-Bus bug tracker or mailing list. See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/. dbus-daemon1, systemd1, the import-environment command of systemctl1