#+TITLE: Proton Bridge — kill the autostart .desktop, add a DNS wait drop-in
#+DATE: 2026-05-12

* Summary

When Proton Mail Bridge is run as a systemd =--user= service (the setup
done on 2026-05-08), two things still need cleaning up that the installer
should handle:

1. Remove the XDG autostart entry =~/.config/autostart/Proton Mail Bridge.desktop=.
   It double-launches Bridge and produces an "orphan instance" error dialog
   on every login.
2. Add a small drop-in to the user service so it waits (bounded) for DNS
   before starting, instead of spewing name-resolution errors into the
   journal on every boot.

Neither is fatal — mail flows fine — but both are visible noise that
recurs on each boot.

* Problem 1 — "An orphan instance of bridge is already running"

** Symptom

On login, a popup: "An orphan instance of bridge is already running.
Please terminate it and relaunch the application." Dismissing it with OK
is harmless and Bridge keeps working, but it comes back every boot.

** Diagnosis

Two launch mechanisms are both active:

- =systemctl --user enable protonmail-bridge.service= (set up 2026-05-08)
  starts =/usr/bin/protonmail-bridge-core --noninteractive= early in the
  boot. It grabs Bridge's lock and binds the IMAP/SMTP loopback ports
  (127.0.0.1:1143 / :1025). This is the canonical instance now.
- =~/.config/autostart/Proton Mail Bridge.desktop= (created 2026-01-25,
  before the systemd migration) fires =protonmail-bridge --no-window=
  when the desktop session loads. It finds the core already running,
  can't get the lock, and throws the "orphan instance" dialog.

So the dialog is the second (GUI-wrapper) launcher complaining about the
first (systemd core). The autostart stub is leftover from the old
"manually launched =--no-window= process" setup and should have been
removed when Bridge became a systemd user service.

The autostart file's contents were:

#+begin_example
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Proton Mail Bridge
Exec="protonmail-bridge" "--no-window"
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
#+end_example

** Fix applied

#+begin_src bash
rm ~/.config/autostart/"Proton Mail Bridge.desktop"
#+end_src

Reversible: it's just an XDG autostart stub. Reinstalling the
=proton-bridge= package or copying =/usr/share/applications/proton-bridge.desktop=
into =~/.config/autostart/= would bring it back. The installer should
make sure this file does *not* exist whenever the systemd user service
is the chosen launch mechanism.

* Problem 2 — name-resolution errors in the journal on every boot

** Symptom

For ~10 seconds right after boot, the bridge journal logs repeated:

#+begin_example
WARN ... Get "https://mail-api.proton.me/tests/ping": dial tcp:
  lookup mail-api.proton.me: Temporary failure in name resolution
ERRO ... Cannot download or verify the version file: ... Temporary
  failure in name resolution
WARN ... Ping failed, API is still unreachable
#+end_example

It clears on its own (DNS comes up, Bridge retries and connects). Same
boot-race class as the Tailscale "can't reach configured DNS" footer.

** Diagnosis

The packaged unit (=/usr/lib/systemd/user/protonmail-bridge.service=)
only has =After=network.target=, which says nothing about DNS being
ready. The user-instance systemd manager doesn't carry
=network-online.target= / =nss-lookup.target= the way the system
instance does, so ordering against those isn't available in user scope.
The service therefore starts before the resolver is usable and Bridge's
first API calls all fail until DNS comes up a few seconds later.

** Fix applied

A drop-in that runs a bounded DNS-wait before =ExecStart=. The leading
=-= makes the pre-step non-fatal: if DNS is still down after 30 s the
service starts anyway and falls back on Bridge's own API-reachability
retry loop (so an offline boot doesn't hang the unit).

File: =~/.config/systemd/user/protonmail-bridge.service.d/wait-for-dns.conf=

#+begin_example
[Service]
ExecStartPre=-/bin/sh -c 'for i in $(seq 1 30); do getent hosts mail-api.proton.me >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0; sleep 1; done'
#+end_example

Then:

#+begin_src bash
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user restart protonmail-bridge.service
#+end_src

Verified: =ExecStartPre= exits 0, service active, IMAP on 127.0.0.1:1143
answers with the normal capability banner.

* What the installer should do

When it sets up Proton Bridge as a systemd =--user= service:

1. =systemctl --user enable --now protonmail-bridge.service= (already done
   today by the 2026-05-08 work — keep it).
2. Ensure =~/.config/autostart/Proton Mail Bridge.desktop= does *not*
   exist (remove it if a Bridge install dropped it there). Otherwise the
   "orphan instance" popup recurs every login.
3. Install the =wait-for-dns.conf= drop-in above under
   =~/.config/systemd/user/protonmail-bridge.service.d/= and
   =daemon-reload=. Optional but it keeps the boot journal clean.

* Context

- Bridge version at time of writing: 03.24.02 (=protonmail-bridge-core=).
- Host: ratio. The systemd-user-service setup also applies to any other
  machine that runs Bridge headless; the autostart-stub cleanup is the
  one that bites on a desktop login session specifically.
- Related earlier note (now folded in): the 2026-05-08 Proton Bridge +
  cmail-triage setup that first moved Bridge from a manual =--no-window=
  process to the systemd user service. The =pass not initialized= warning
  noted there is separate and still benign (Bridge falls back to its own
  encrypted state).