Collector.user fails with dbus error

[2knarf]

root@util03:~/systemd_exporter-0.4.0.linux-amd64# ./systemd_exporter --log.level="debug" --collector.user
INFO[0000] Starting systemd_exporter (version=0.4.0, branch=HEAD, revision=bf3e6eb30bcc6cb222b9ab5ec50fab3bd0f75a67) source="main.go:41"
INFO[0000] Build context (go=go1.13.10, user=root@a01a64035e14, date=20200421-03:35:32) source="main.go:42"
INFO[0000] Listening on :9558 source="main.go:88"

ERRO[0003] could not get list of systemd units from dbus: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1 source="systemd.go:228"

[sydoracle]

If anyone else hits this, it could be down to an old version of DBUS

There's a stub version of "/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.systemd1.service" which calls /bin/false

From systemd/systemd#5247
"org.freedesktop.systemd1 is an interface to interact with Systemd via DBus, and to my knowledge, it is the only purpose of this service file. The /bin/false thing is just a stub thing, it could be /dev/null, or whatever (falsy thing). The Exec property is just to make the service file a valid one, and have nothing to do with starting or stopping Systemd, or DBus interactions with it."

I believe it is fixed in dbus 1.11
systemd/systemd#13396

"Since dbus 1.11.0, a dbus-daemon that is run with --systemd-activation automatically assumes that o.fd.systemd1 is an activatable service. As a result, with a new enough dbus version, /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.systemd1.service and /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.systemd1.service should become unnecessary, and they can be removed."

Try the following:
dbus-send --session --print-reply --reply-timeout=2000 --type=method_call --dest=org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager.ListUnits | head

If it fails with a "Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed." you can get around that with a export $(dbus-launch)
I've got one system where "dbus-daemon --version" is 1.10.24 which then gives an error
"Error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1"

On a later system (DBus 1.12.8) it succeeds and lists the services.