dbus-monitor

dbus-monitor [options] [filter...]

dbus-monitor displays D-Bus messages passing through the message bus. It's useful for debugging D-Bus services, understanding inter-process communication, and reverse-engineering application behavior.The tool connects to the bus and becomes an eavesdropper, showing all messages matching the specified filters. Without filters, it shows all messages.

--system

Monitor system bus.

Monitor session bus (default).

Connect to specific bus address.

Output in profile format.

Output in monitor format (default).

Output in pcap format (loadable in Wireshark).

Output raw binary messages.

type='signal': Signal messagestype='method_call': Method callstype='method_return': Method returnstype='error': Error messagessender='name': From specific senderdestination='name': To specific destinationinterface='name': Specific interfacemember='name': Specific method/signalpath='path': Specific object path

May require permissions to eavesdrop. Some buses restrict monitoring. High traffic buses produce verbose output. Security policies may limit visibility.

dbus-monitor is part of the D-Bus project, started by Red Hat in 2002. D-Bus became the standard IPC mechanism for Linux desktops, and dbus-monitor has been essential for debugging and development since the early days of the project.

dbus-send(1), busctl(1), gdbus(1), qdbus(1)

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