I have a cron job which runs every 30 minutes that changes the background image by running this bash script: #!/bin/bash export DISPLAY=:0 export GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf wpdir="/home/username/Pictures/wallpapers/" prefix="file://" file=`ls $wpdir | shuf -n 1` gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "$prefix$wpdir$file" This worked perfectly until I upgraded to 14.04. Now, running the script produces this output: (process:27459): dconf-WARNING **: failed to commit changes to dconf: Could not connect: Connection refused What can I do to fix this? Google didn't turn up any useful results. EDIT: I noticed that running this does change the background displayed on the lock screen, but it does not affect the desktop background.