Bug#519773: gksu: causes errors opening gedit from root terminal and for programs requiring root privileges

[James Fisher]

Package: gksu
Version: 2.0.0-8
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks unrelated software


1) When launching gedit from a root terminal, always get this error in a 
popup window: "Failed to contact configuration server; some possible 
causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you 
have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See 
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: 
Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible 
causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message 
bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the 
network connection was broken.)"

2) Same as above occurs when launching nautilus from a root window 
and the nautilus window that opens in fact does not have root 
privileges.

3) Interferes with functionality of programs that require root password 
to use them. Update-manager fails to launch after entering password. 
Adjusting time for gnome panel applet or opening network preferences 
window, gives this error: "The platform you are running is not supported 
by this tool, if you know for sure that it works like one of the 
platforms listed below, you can select that and continue. Note, however, 
that this might damage the system configuration or downright cripple 
your computer."

I'm not certain these problems all relate to gksu, but it seems like the 
culprit, since they are all errors that appear when launching a gnome 
program with root priviledges and, in the case of 3), occur immediately 
after entering root password in popup window. They also all appear after 
gksu upgrades from 2.0.0-6 to 2.0.0-8. Some people report solving 
problem 1) by upgrading to 2.0.2, but this did not solve the problem for 
me.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gksu depends on:
ii  gnome-keyring                 2.22.3-2   GNOME keyring services (daemon and
ii  libatk1.0-0                   1.22.0-1   The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libc6                         2.7-18     GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2                     1.8.6-2    The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libgconf2-4                   2.24.0-7   GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libgksu2-0                    2.0.7-1    library providing su and sudo func
ii  libglib2.0-0                  2.18.4-2   The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-keyring0             2.22.3-2   GNOME keyring services library
ii  libgtk2.0-0                   2.12.12-1  The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libpango1.0-0                 1.22.4-2   Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libstartup-notification0      0.9-1      library for program launch feedbac
ii  sudo                          1.6.9p17-2 Provide limited super user privile

gksu recommends no packages.

gksu suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information