Bug 288423 – cannot start gui apps from a root after upgrade to gnome 2.26

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Marcello Magaldi 2009-10-10 12:31:20 UTC]

After an upgrade to gnome 2.26 I'm not able to start gui apps from terminal using root user. This things are useful for example to use wireshark, meld as tool for cfg-update and distccmon-gui. 
On my system the launcher of gnome-terminal as root is gksu.desktop that execute gksu /usr/bin/gnome-terminal .

Instead If I open a gnome-terminal as normal user and use "su -" to become root I can open gui apps.

The error opening distccmon-gui for example is :
distccmon-gui 
No protocol specified

(distccmon-gui:26025): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.open a root terminal in gnome
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
error opening all gui apps from root terminal in gnome


 emerge --info
Portage 2.1.6.13 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.3.2, glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.30-gentoo-r5 x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-2.6.30-gentoo-r5-x86_64-AMD_Athlon-tm-_64_X2_Dual_Core_Processor_5200+-with-gentoo-1.12.11.1
Timestamp of tree: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:15:02 +0000
distcc 3.1 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu [enabled]
ccache version 2.4 [enabled]
app-shells/bash:     4.0_p28
dev-java/java-config: 2.1.8-r1
dev-lang/python:     2.6.2-r1
dev-util/ccache:     2.4-r7
dev-util/cmake:      2.6.4
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.6-r2
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.63-r1
sys-devel/automake:  1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2
sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1
sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6a
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.27-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -msse3 -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config /var/lib/hsqldb"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/splash /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/udev/rules.d"
CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -msse3 -O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="ccache distcc distlocks fixpackages metadata-transfer parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.mneisen.org/ http://gentoo.tiscali.nl/ http://gentoo.virginmedia.com/"
LANG="it_IT.UTF-8@euro"
LC_ALL="it_IT.UTF-8@euro"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
LINGUAS="it en en_US en_GB"
MAKEOPTS="-j7"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage /usr/portage/local/layman/sunrise"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="3dnow 3dnowext X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 amr amrnb amrwb apache2 applet arts aspnet audiofile avahi bash-completion beagle berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 c++ cairo cdaudio cdda cddb cdparanoia cdr chm cli consolekit cracklib crypt css cups cvs cxx dbus dga dri dts dv dvb dvd dvdnav dvdr eds emacs emboss encode epiphany evo exif expat fam fame ffmpeg firefox flac foomaticdb fortran ftp fuse galago gd gdbm gif gimp git glade gnome gnome-keyring gnome-print gnutls gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk guile hal hddtemp iconv id3tag imagemagick inotify ipv6 isdnlog jabber java java6 javascript joystick jpeg kde kpathsea ladspa lame latex lcms ldap libnotify libsamplerate live lm_sensors logitech-mouse lzo mad matroska mikmod mjpeg mmx mmxext modules mono mp3 mp4 mpeg mplayer msn mudflap multilib musepack musicbrainz mysql nautilus ncurses network nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin nuv nvidia odbc offensive ogg ogm opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl php plotutils png ppds pppd pulseaudio python qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection samba scanner scrobbler sdl session shout smp sndfile socks5 sourceview speex spell spl sql sqlite sqlite3 sse sse2 ssl startup-notification subversion svg sysfs syslog taglib tcpd theora threads thunar thunderbird tiff timidity truetype twolame unicode upnp usb v4l v4l2 vcd videos vim-syntax vorbis wavpack wma wmf wxwidgets wxwindows x264 xcb xcomposite xemacs xine xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid xvmc yahoo zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="it en en_US en_GB" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia vga vesa nv"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

[Comment 1 Marcello Magaldi 2009-10-10 14:52:42 UTC]

Thanks to nirbeek on IRC I found the possible cause of this issue :
XDISPLAY var is ok (set to 0:0 like the one of the normal user env) but XAUTHORITY points to a file like this :
XAUTHORITY=/tmp/libgksu-BnohB8/.Xauthority

but if I do :
# cat /tmp/libgksu-BnohB8/.Xauthority
cat: /tmp/libgksu-BnohB8/.Xauthority: No such file or directory

so the problem is that the XAUTHORITY file doesn't exist....

[Comment 2 Marcello Magaldi 2009-10-10 14:59:50 UTC]

I have to say that using "su" without resetting the env gives me the same problem of gksu gnome-terminal : gui apps cannot start.

[Comment 3 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) 2009-10-11 14:30:20 UTC]

Re-emerge x11-misc/shared-mime-info and read the post-installation message. Try the update command also for /root's ~/.local/share/mime/ directory.

It's an half-guess based on another bug report I've seen.

[Comment 4 Marcello Magaldi 2009-10-11 14:50:15 UTC]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Re-emerge x11-misc/shared-mime-info and read the post-installation message. Try
> the update command also for /root's ~/.local/share/mime/ directory.
> 
> It's an half-guess based on another bug report I've seen.
> 

re-emerging shared-mime-info did the trick. Anyway I don't have /root/.local/ dir on my system and neither /usr/local/share/mime/ so I think I should not run the update commands from post-installation message.

[Comment 5 Marcello Magaldi 2009-10-27 16:15:09 UTC]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > Re-emerge x11-misc/shared-mime-info and read the post-installation message. Try
> > the update command also for /root's ~/.local/share/mime/ directory.
> > 
> > It's an half-guess based on another bug report I've seen.
> > 
> 
> re-emerging shared-mime-info did the trick. Anyway I don't have /root/.local/
> dir on my system and neither /usr/local/share/mime/ so I think I should not run
> the update commands from post-installation message.
> 

I hit the same problem again on the same system, and perhaps the same solution works again but is there a way to figure out what make this issue happen?