Install multiple avant window navigator dock panels on more than one display by editing gconf or change the source code for the more complete, but harder way. There may be a newer version of Avant Window Navigator (AWN) out that supports multiple docks across completely different displays, but I wanted to get this working in version 0.4.0 which relies upon a set of older libraries that I already have.

With one host connecting and launching dbus sessions, this should work. You can get the variable from running sessions in /proc/ /environ. But as soon as you have multiple hosts, you need to figure out which host you’re coming from.

The easiest fix is to fix the permissions or delete the .dbus directory from your home directory. If this doesn’t work, run the offending application with dbus-launch which forces a new dbus session bus to spawn for this application. Don’t skip the option or you’ll end up with multiple dbus sessions left running in no time.

Check iptables or other firewall applications running on that machine. If ldap traffic is being blocked, this could be causing it to hang. That’s what happened to me. I changed the firewall rules and forgot to add the ldaps rule and it broke. I could work around it by hitting “i” while booting and it would go into Interactive mode and allow me to say No to the MessageBus service. Everything else came up fine in runlevels 3 and 5, but it would always hang when loading the dbus app.