---
name: "dbus-cleanup-sockets"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "dbus"
version: "1.16.2-2"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/dbus-cleanup-sockets"
---

# dbus-cleanup-sockets(1)

clean up leftover sockets in a directory

## NAME

dbus-cleanup-sockets - clean up leftover sockets in a directory

## SYNOPSIS

**dbus-cleanup-sockets** \[*DIRECTORY*\]\

## DESCRIPTION

The **dbus-cleanup-sockets** command cleans up unused D-Bus connection sockets. See **https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/** for more information about the big picture.

If given no arguments, **dbus-cleanup-sockets** cleans up sockets in the standard default socket directory for the per-user-login-session message bus; this is usually /tmp. Optionally, you can pass a different directory on the command line.

On Linux, this program is essentially useless, because D-Bus defaults to using "abstract sockets" that exist only in memory and don't have a corresponding file in /tmp.

On most other flavors of UNIX, it's possible for the socket files to leak when programs using D-Bus exit abnormally or without closing their D-Bus connections. Thus, it might be interesting to run dbus-cleanup-sockets in a cron job to mop up any leaked sockets. Or you can just ignore the leaked sockets, they aren't really hurting anything, other than cluttering the output of "ls /tmp"

## AUTHOR

dbus-cleanup-sockets was adapted by Havoc Pennington from linc-cleanup-sockets written by Michael Meeks.

## BUGS

Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see **https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/**