[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#842712: xfce4-notifyd: fails to start because of missing DISPLAY variable

[Simon Frei]

Package: xfce4-notifyd
Version: 0.3.3-1
Severity: normal

xfce4-notifyd does not work which also affects xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin (probably also others). The relevant system log is:

    xfce4-notifyd[3009]: Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
    xfce4-notifyd[3009]: cannot open display: 
    systemd[1583]: xfce4-notifyd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
    systemd[1583]: Failed to start XFCE notifications service.
    systemd[1583]: xfce4-notifyd.service: Unit entered failed state.
    systemd[1583]: xfce4-notifyd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

If I run /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/notifyd/xfce4-notify or add the line Environment="DISPLAY=:0.0" to xfce4-notifyd.service, everything works as expected.
This is probably related to an update (though that is a rather old one) in dbus. Before that one the DISPLAY variable was passed to any service of type dbus, afterwards that was no longer the case. See:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/46374

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (2, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.7.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages xfce4-notifyd depends on:
ii  libc6               2.24-5
ii  libcairo2           1.14.6-1+b1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0  2.36.0-1
ii  libglib2.0-0        2.50.1-1
ii  libgtk-3-0          3.22.2-1
ii  libnotify4          0.7.7-1
ii  libx11-6            2:1.6.3-1
ii  libxfce4ui-2-0      4.12.1-2
ii  libxfce4util7       4.12.1-2
ii  libxfconf-0-2       4.12.0-3

Versions of packages xfce4-notifyd recommends:
ii  libnotify-bin  0.7.7-1

xfce4-notifyd suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information