The setuid helper of D-Bus is responsible for "service activation". It looks for '.service' files in fixed locations, but the default locations make no sense (see below), so replace them with /etc/dbus-1/system-services. --- dbus-1.10.0/dbus/dbus-sysdeps-util-unix.c 2015-10-22 00:07:03.829251854 +0200 +++ dbus-1.10.0/dbus/dbus-sysdeps-util-unix.c 2015-10-22 00:07:14.893445175 +0200 @@ -1410,10 +1410,7 @@ _dbus_get_standard_system_servicedirs (D * be available. */ static const char standard_search_path[] = - "/usr/local/share:" - "/usr/share:" - DBUS_DATADIR ":" - "/lib"; + "/etc"; DBusString servicedir_path; _dbus_string_init_const (&servicedir_path, standard_search_path);