[Aptitude-devel] Bug#442937: Annoying error: .aptitude is readable but not writable; unable to write configuration file.

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + pending


Hi Trent,

2007-09-18 00:48 Trent W. Buck:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.4.6.1-1
>Severity: wishlist
>
>I invoke aptitude with "sudo aptitude" instead of "sudo -H aptitude"
>so my .aptitude/config will be read (instead of root's).
>
>The /home filesystem is an NFS mount with -o root_squash, so root can
>read from but not write to ~/.aptitude:
>
>    $ stat -L ~/.aptitude
>      File: `/home/twb/.aptitude'
>      Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 32768  directory
>    Device: 15h/21d Inode: 8702031     Links: 2
>    Access: (0750/drwxr-x---)  Uid: ( 1187/     twb)   Gid: ( 2000/   cyber)
>    Access: 2007-09-18 09:23:14.000000000 +1000
>    Modify: 2007-09-17 05:46:40.000000000 +1000
>    Change: 2007-09-17 05:46:40.000000000 +1000
>
>Thus, every time aptitude (in GUI mode) starts up it complains:
>
>    E: /home/twb/.aptitude is readable but not writable; unable to
>    write configuration file.
>
>This is annoying.  I don't really want to give all users write access
>to ~/.aptitude.  I don't want to copy ~/.aptitude to each host's
>~root/.aptitude; it would be tedious and probably irritate other
>admins who prefer different configuration.  (This is the same argument
>against customizing root in other ways, such as changing the default
>shell to csh.)
>
>Instead I would like to be able to configure aptitude (via
>~/.aptitude/config) to defer reporting this "error" until it actually
>needs to modify ~/.aptitude, which in my case will be never because I
>have already configured aptitude to my liking.

This has been fixed now, it will be present in the next release, marking
as +pending.


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>