I think I have a Mac that does that. I will check into why it is.

AstroGabe,

Can you try running this in a terminal window before running KStars? I am assuming that the data directory has already been copied into place.

launchctl load -w /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/PlugIns/dbus/org.freedesktop.dbus-kstars.plist

This seems to be the issue on the computer that I have which appears to have a similar issue to yours. For some reason dbus didn't start.

Unfortunately, that didn't work. Same result as before. Also, the command you had me try reported back that the service was already loaded.

Unfortunately, that didn't work. Same result as before. Also, the command you had me try reported back that the service was already loaded.

It appears to be what was wrong on the computer that I just experimented with. But your problem may be different.
You can try unloading it and then loading it.

launchctl unload -w /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/PlugIns/dbus/org.freedesktop.dbus-kstars.plist
launchctl load -w /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/PlugIns/dbus/org.freedesktop.dbus-kstars.plist

You might try a restart too before you load it. Just a thought

Another question is what version of os x do you have on this laptop?

I've unloaded, restarted the laptop and loaded the plist file again to no avail. The OS X version I'm using is 10.13.4.

Hmm, I am also using 10.13.4

When you start kstars, can you check Activity Monitor to see if dbus-daemon is started?

It appears dbus-daemon isn't running when kstars freezes.

Yes, that was the issue on the computer I just fixed it on. but it successfully started up the service. So the question is if this is the problem on your machine, why isn't it starting if we start the service and then launch kstars

Oh, there was another command that needed to run when launching the service, I don't know if this matters. It needs certain permissions

chmod 755 /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/PlugIns/dbus/org.freedesktop.dbus-kstars.plist
launchctl load -w /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/PlugIns/dbus/org.freedesktop.dbus-kstars.plist

Then start kstars and see what happens

oh and one other thing. The other thing that should happen is that some things get written into the plist file.

if you open the plist file, does it look something like this?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.freedesktop.dbus-kstars</string>

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/dbus-daemon</string>
<string>--nofork</string>
<string>--config-file=/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/PlugIns/dbus/kstars.conf</string>
</array>

<key>Sockets</key>
<dict>
<key>unix_domain_listener</key>
<dict>
<key>SecureSocketWithKey</key>
<string>DBUS_LAUNCHD_SESSION_BUS_SOCKET</string>
</dict>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>