Bug#794972: gksu: Environment variable XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not reset, renders gnome unusable.

[Klaus Stein]

Package: gksu
Version: 2.0.2-9
Severity: important

After upgrading to Jessie sometimes Gnome got unusable as
/run/user/1000/steink/dconf was suddenly owned by root and not writeable by
steink (Gnome hangs, /var/log/messages grew to some GB etc.).

According to
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1197395> this is
caused by XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not being properly reset when switching to root with
su/sudo/…

Su and sudo are fixed, but with gksu XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000 survives
(which causes the problem).

I think this should not happen without -k.

A quick fix would be to at least change /usr/share/applications/gksu.desktop:
Exec=gksu /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator
to
Exec=gksu -l /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator

I am not sure whether root should be allowed to use XDG_RUNTIME in this way and
change file ownership, so maybe the bug (partly) belongs to another package.

Thanks,

Klaus



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages gksu depends on:
ii  gconf-service             3.2.6-3
ii  libatk1.0-0               2.14.0-1
ii  libc6                     2.19-18
ii  libcairo2                 1.14.0-2.1
ii  libfontconfig1            2.11.0-6.3
ii  libfreetype6              2.5.2-3
ii  libgconf-2-4              3.2.6-3
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0        2.31.1-2+b1
ii  libgksu2-0                2.0.13~pre1-8
ii  libglib2.0-0              2.42.1-1
ii  libgnome-keyring0         3.12.0-1+b1
ii  libgtk2.0-0               2.24.25-3
ii  libpango-1.0-0            1.36.8-3
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0       1.36.8-3
ii  libpangoft2-1.0-0         1.36.8-3
ii  libstartup-notification0  0.12-4
ii  sudo                      1.8.10p3-1+deb8u2

Versions of packages gksu recommends:
ii  gnome-keyring  3.14.0-1+b1

gksu suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information