GTK issue – Can’t run synaptic

[Member dukester]

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sybok wrote:

I would not blame ‘ssh’ which I used as an analogy of my (poor?) understanding of ‘sudo’.

Got it! Thx for clarifying!!

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dukester

[Member dukester]

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Another issue popped up – I think as a result of running:

sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME

Some things in Control Center will not launch now. Like:

system/Edit Config files
system/Set Date and Time
Maintenance/Boot Repair
Maintenance/Menu Editor
etc

I was in the “wheel” group. How do I check if I still am?

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dukester

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Debian does not have a ‘wheel’ group.
Where did you get it from and why?

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member dukester]

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i must have had my freeBSD hat on when I wrote that. I just assumed that I had to be a member of an “admin” / “wheel” group or some such in order to have root privileges. I was simply trying to figure out why I could not launch those programs anymore. The first thing that came to mind was “permissions”.

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dukester

[Member sybok]

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In order to be able to run programs with|requiring elevated privileges, you should be (‘root’ or) a member of ‘sudo’ (or you should have edited the ‘sudoers’ file).
The groups and their members are listed in ‘/etc/group’, to quickly get your username from it, you may simply grep it (run as a normal user):
grep $(whoami) /etc/group

Some of the items in the Control centre require elevated privileges.
If you did run e.g. ‘sudo’ in the past 10 or 15 minutes, then during this period, you need not to reenter the password as the elevated privileges have a timeout.
Could it be that you did not need to do password confirmation in the past and now you are surprised you have to?

I doubt the recursive ‘chown’ command would affect that if called with correct values (perhaps, it’s the environment again).
You can test if there is any difference by running:
sudo echo "Normal: User [$USER] with home [$HOME]"; sudo -E echo "With Env: User [$USER] with home [$HOME]";
If both values of $USER and $HOME agree in the two variants, then I do not see any reason for the ‘chown’ to have messed up anything.

PS: Once the thread is done, please ask an admin (via PM) to mark this thread as solved. If there are any other posts you created in the past and are resolved and not marked accordingly, please include them in your polite request.

[Member RJP]

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dukester wrote:

Another issue popped up – I think as a result of running:

sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME

Some things in Control Center will not launch now. Like:

system/Edit Config files
system/Set Date and Time
Maintenance/Boot Repair
Maintenance/Menu Editor
etc

If that happens, the question is that who is whoami and who owns the files. Some checks:

whoami
pwd
find $HOME ! -user $USER -type f
ls -laR

[Member sybok]

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the question is that who is whoami

Getting a little philosophical here? 🙂

[Member dukester]

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sudo echo “Normal: User [$USER] with home [$HOME]”
Normal: User [dnormandin] with home [/home/dnormandin]

sudo -E echo “with Env: User [$USER] with home [$HOME]”
with Env: User [dnormandin] with home [/home/dnormandin]

grep $(whoami) /etc/group
lp:x:7:dnormandin
dialout:x:20:dnormandin
cdrom:x:24:dnormandin
floppy:x:25:dnormandin
sudo:x:27:dnormandin
audio:x:29:dnormandin,pulse
dip:x:30:dnormandin
video:x:44:dnormandin
plugdev:x:46:dnormandin
users:x:100:dnormandin
netdev:x:109:dnormandin
lpadmin:x:112:dnormandin
scanner:x:113:saned,dnormandin
vboxsf:x:114:dnormandin
dnormandin:x:1000:

sybok wrote:

Could it be that you did not need to do password confirmation in the past and now you are surprised you have to?

I always needed to type in my password in the past. I had a “password respite period” afterwards.
I did `sudo visudo’ when I first installed antiX. Everything had been working just dandy.
Prior to this issue, I never had trouble running anything in Control Centre.

sybok wrote:

PS: Once the thread is done, please ask an admin (via PM) to mark this thread as solved. If there are any other posts you created in the past and are resolved and not marked accordingly, please include them in your polite request.

Roger wilco! 🙂

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dukester

[Member dukester]

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whoami
dnormandin

pwd
/home/dnormandin

find $HOME ! -user $USER -type f
/home/dnormandin/.config/dconf/user

ls -laR | less

Returns for example ..

drwxr-xr-x 76 dnormandin dnormandin 4096 Apr 18 11:46 .config
-rw-r–r– 1 dnormandin dnormandin 3907 Mar 23 2021 .conkyrc
-rw-r–r– 1 dnormandin dnormandin 2490 Oct 10 2020 .conkyrc-lua
-rw-r–r– 1 dnormandin dnormandin 266 Dec 15 2021 .conkySpectr

Seems okay!

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dukester

[Member RJP]

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dukester wrote:

find $HOME ! -user $USER -type f
/home/dnormandin/.config/dconf/user

What about
ls -laR /home/dnormandin/.config/dconf/user

[Member dukester]

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ls -laR /home/dnormandin/.config/dconf/user

-rw-r–r– 1 root root 4229 Apr 27 20:26 /home/dnormandin/.config/dconf/user

Is that bad?

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dukester

[Member RJP]

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dukester wrote:

ls -laR /home/dnormandin/.config/dconf/user

-rw-r–r– 1 root root 4229 Apr 27 20:26 /home/dnormandin/.config/dconf/user

Is that bad?

Maybe it can prevent some functions if regular user has no privileges.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dconf

PolicyKit integration is planned so that a normal user may temporarily gain the ability to, for example, write to the keys under /system/ (or /default/). This means that programs like the GNOME Display Manager configuration utility no longer have to be run as root.

[Member dukester]

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Thx for the link! On my system only the empty directory /etc/dconf/db/ exists.

I’m wondering why this `dconf’ thing would be an issue all of a sudden. I sure never messed with it.
What a PITA this is getting to be. Something is always breaking it seems. Are you experiencing the same thing?

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dukester

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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dukester wrote:

Something is always breaking it seems. Are you experiencing the same thing?

No.
As I posted, you have probably installed something outside the buster repos and now you’re seeing issues.
You also made changes by adding yourself to the wheel group that almost certainly broke things.

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member dukester]

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anticapitalista wrote:

You also made changes by adding yourself to the wheel group that almost certainly broke things.

I did no such thing!! Look up-thread where I do a `grep $(whoami) /etc/group’ !!

anticapitalista wrote:

you have probably installed something outside the buster repos and now you’re seeing issues.

Maybe so, but why would it take all this time to “go south” on me? I haven’t installed anything in some time.

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dukester

[Author]

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