DBUS-SEND(1)

dbus-send — DBUS-SEND(1), but make it cute 💅

Okay bestie, welcome to dbus-send from the User Commands section — this is the DBUS-SEND(1) manual page, and it is literally your little messenger for talking to a D-Bus message bus. 🦋

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

dbus-send [--system | --session | --bus=ADDRESS | --peer=ADDRESS]
          [--sender=NAME] [--dest=NAME] [--print-reply [=literal]]
          [--reply-timeout=MSEC] [--type=TYPE] OBJECT_PATH
          INTERFACE.MEMBER [CONTENTS...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So the dbus-send command sends a message to a D-Bus message bus. If you want the whole big-picture vibe, see https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/ — that’s where the lore lives. ✨

There are two well-known message buses, bestie:

• the systemwide message bus — installed on many systems as the "messagebus" service
• the per-user-login-session message bus — started each time a user logs in

The --system and --session options tell dbus-send to send messages to the system or session buses respectively. If neither is specified, dbus-send sends to the session bus. Default behavior, slay. 💅

Nearly all uses of dbus-send must provide the --dest argument, which is the name of a connection on the bus to send the message to. If --dest is omitted, no destination is set. 🫶

The object path and the name of the message to send must always be specified. Following arguments, if any, are the message contents (message arguments). These are given as type-specified values and may include containers (arrays, dicts, and variants) as described below:

    <contents>   ::= <item> | <container> [ <item> | <container>...]
    <item>       ::= <type>:<value>
    <container>  ::= <array> | <dict> | <variant>
    <array>      ::= array:<type>:<value>[,<value>...]
    <dict>       ::= dict:<type>:<type>:<key>,<value>[,<key>,<value>...]
    <variant>    ::= variant:<type>:<value>
    <type>       ::= string | int16 | uint16 | int32 | uint32 | int64 | uint64 | double | byte | boolean | objpath

D-Bus supports more types than these, but dbus-send currently does not. Also, dbus-send does not permit empty containers or nested containers (e.g. arrays of variants). Not me finding out the hard way 😭 — that’s just the rule.

Here is an example invocation:

      dbus-send --dest=org.freedesktop.ExampleName               \
                /org/freedesktop/sample/object/name              \
                org.freedesktop.ExampleInterface.ExampleMethod   \
                int32:47 string:'hello world' double:65.32       \
                array:string:"1st item","next item","last item"  \
                dict:string:int32:"one",1,"two",2,"three",3      \
                variant:int32:-8                                 \
                objpath:/org/freedesktop/sample/object/name

Note that the interface is separated from a method or signal name by a dot, though in the actual protocol the interface and the interface member are separate fields. iykyk 🧚

✨ OPTIONS ✨

The following options are supported:

• --dest=NAME — specify the name of the connection to receive the message.
• --print-reply — block for a reply to the message sent, and print any reply received in a human-readable form. It also means the message type (--type=) is method_call.
• --print-reply=literal — block for a reply to the message sent, and print the body of the reply. If the reply is an object path or a string, it is printed literally, with no punctuation, escape characters etc.
• --reply-timeout=MSEC — wait for a reply for up to MSEC milliseconds. The default is implementation‐defined, typically 25 seconds.
• --system — send to the system message bus.
• --session — send to the session message bus. (This is the default.)
• --bus=ADDRESS — register on a message bus at ADDRESS, typically a dbus-daemon.
• --peer=ADDRESS — send to a non-message-bus D-Bus server at ADDRESS. In this case dbus-send will not call the Hello method.
• --sender=NAME — request ownership of name NAME before sending the message. The name will be released when dbus-send exits.
• --type=TYPE — specify method_call or signal (defaults to "signal").

🔥 EXIT STATUS 🔥

Exit status 0 indicates success. A non-zero exit status indicates any failure, including invalid parameters, failure to connect to the --bus or --peer, failure to obtain the --sender name, a timeout while waiting for a reply to a method call, or receiving an error as the reply to a method call. So yeah — 0 is the slay, non-zero is the “bestie, something went wrong” 😭

👑 AUTHOR 👑

dbus-send was written by Philip Blundell. Icon behavior, honestly. 💜

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/ — they want the receipts, bestie. 🫶

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💖 That’s the whole page, bestie — from D-Bus 1.16.2, dated 03/03/2025, and yes, it’s the DBUS-SEND(1) manual. 🎀