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I am running Ubuntu 14.10 with XFCE. Since a few weeks, gedit is not launching any more as root (with gksu gedit).

Launching with my normal account works without problems. The problem is not gksu, as it does the same as sudo (I know, not recommended for GUI) or gksudo. pkexec gives a different error. However, other programs (e.g. eog) run fine with gksu!

When I run gksu gedit, I get the gksu password prompt, and after entering it, I see the circling mouse cursor for maybe half a minute, but no gedit window opens. No terminal output either.

Running pkexec gedit in a terminal gives:

bytecommander@AlkaliMetal:~$ pkexec gedit
gdk_mir_display_open
Failed to connect to Mir: Failed to connect to server socket: File or Path not found.

(gedit:3935): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: 
bytecommander@AlkaliMetal:~$

Running gedit in a root terminal gives:

root@AlkaliMetal:/home/bytecommander# gedit

(gedit:24281): dconf-WARNING **: failed to commit changes to dconf: Failed to execute child process "dbus-launch" (No such file or directory)

** (gedit:24281): CRITICAL **: file log.c: line 975: unexpected error: Failed to execute child process "dbus-launch" (No such file or directory) (g-exec-error-quark, 8)

^C
root@AlkaliMetal:/home/bytecommander#

(The command doesn't terminate. I aborted it after a while with Ctrl+C)

I searched for the log.c file from the error message. The only one I found was /usr/share/gettext/intl/log.c. Strange is however, that this file only contains 126 lines, so the line mentioned above (line 975) is not existing! Shall I post the content? It looks like normal C-code.

I also already deleted /root/.config/gedit/, but nothing changed.

Starting dconf-editor from a root terminal and examining the keys in dconf:/org/gnome/gedit did not show any suspicious (to me!) values. I can post some keys if you tell me how to dump them. I only know how to use the GUI tool.

What do I have to I do to restore my root-dconf settings for gedit (assuming this is the problem)? Or am I wrong and the problem has another cause?
Maybe you can even guess what messed it up so that I can avoid it in the future. Thanks!

Byte Commander
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1 Answers1

4

I somehow managed to solve my problem and get gedit back to work, even for root.

What I did was

  1. sudo apt-get install --reinstall dbus dbus-x11

    to reinstall some dbus-packages which I probably messed up some time ago by running make uninstall on a package containing dbus parts.

  2. dconf dump /org/gnome/gedit/ > /home/bytecommander/dconf-gedit.dump followed by opening a root shell with sudo -i and as root:
    dconf load /org/gnome/gedit/ < /home/bytecommander/dconf-gedit.dump

    to copy the working dconf-settings for gedit from my normal user profile over to root's dconf database.

After that it works like a charm. Even the dconf-warnings about dbus-launch disappeared.

Byte Commander
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