Bug 8895

Summary: KDE 4.9.97 fails to launch desktop items with substituteUID for root
Product: Mageia Reporter: Juergen Harms <juergen.harms>
Component: RPM PackagesAssignee: Mageia Bug Squad <bugsquad>
Status: RESOLVED INVALID QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: Normal    
Version: Cauldron   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard: 3beta2
Source RPM: CVE:
Status comment:

Description Juergen Harms 2013-01-29 23:36:34 CET 
Description of problem:

Since the upgrade to KDE 4.9.97, desktop items which use "SubstituteUID" for user "root" cannot be launched any more, as illustrated in the appended desktop item for launching a root-kwrite

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): KDE 4.9.97


How reproducible:
always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use the kde menu-editor to create a desktop item (say, for launching kwrite)
2. In the "Advanced" tab, check "Run as different user", set Username to "root"
3. Hit the "save" button of the menu-editor
4. Launch that menu item: kwrite will not be launched (and no KDE su dialog will pop up).

The same issue arises if the target program is not kwrite but some other program such as xemacs. And, this worked with all earlier versions of KDE.


Here is a dump of the desktop item created by the KDE menu editor.

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=
Exec=kwrite
Name=abc
NoDisplay=false
Path[$e]=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=0
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=true
X-KDE-Username=root
Juergen Harms 2013-01-29 23:43:10 CET

Whiteboard: (none) => 3beta2

Comment 1 Juergen Harms 2013-02-01 11:38:12 CET 
I just realized that I only have the problem on my laptop, not on my server pc. Both installations are generated using the same scripts - should be identical (-

I will do some more digging to understand / check whether I have a local problem.
Comment 2 Juergen Harms 2013-02-01 12:55:15 CET 
In fact, even doing "/usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/kdesu kwrite" did not work, just hung. Doing ps, I saw that there was a long list of hung kdesu processes.

After killing kdesud, the next kdesu worked perfectly and the problem is gone (no problem also after reboot). So, I assume this has been some obscure incident.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => INVALID