[Bug 938792] Re: starting gparted with pkexec fails

[Rüdiger Kupper]

Indeed, there is! Thank you for pointing this out.

My home directory is mounted via nfs. For security reasons, nfs by default does not allow root access to the exported shares -- when root tries to write to a nfs share, the user and group is changed to nobody:nogroup. (This is called "root squashing")
Apparently pkexec tries to write to my home directory as the root user, and this fails, since nfs changes the user to nobody, who cannot write to my home.

Solution:
When I turn off this security feature and allow root access via nfs, everything works fine.

Still I wonder why pkexec tries to write to my home as root? Do you know what it's trying to do?
Anyway. this may well by an issue of policykit, not gparted at all.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/938792

Title:
  starting gparted with pkexec fails

Status in “gparted” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete
Status in “policykit-1” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  oneiric

  Starting gparted with "gparted-pkexec" fails with
  "No protocol specified
  (gpartedbin:4076): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :1"

  This means gparted cannot be started from the unity dash.

  Starting with "gksudo gparted" works fine.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: gparted 0.8.1-1ubuntu4
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-16.28-generic 3.0.17
  Uname: Linux 3.0.0-16-generic i686
  ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Wed Feb 22 17:19:30 2012
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
  SourcePackage: gparted
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-14 (130 days ago)

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