Found the culprit ... it was a leftover of a test for dbus-broker now two years back: ll /etc/systemd/user/dbus.service lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 41 Oct 10 2018 /etc/systemd/user/dbus.service -> /usr/lib/systemd/user/dbus-broker.service and /usr/lib/systemd/user/dbus-broker.service had not exist anmymore after the zypper dup. And new systemd had not ignored the broken link but marked the dbus.service as not loaded (but without hinting why it has not loaded). After removing the dangling symlink and reboot (as a simple daemon-reload had not helpd out), things are now working ... OK I had also removed the crediential lines from my ~/.oscrc so that it use the gnome-keyring (btw. the error message of kwalletd5 still remains with the not existing SmartCard).