[xubuntu-users] .cache/dconf/user file ?

[Paul Cartwright]

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[Ralf Mardorf]

I was backing up my home directory using cron, like I always do. Today
cp: cannot open ???/home/my_user/.cache/dconf/user??? for reading: Permission denied
.cache/dconf/user is
-rw------- 1 root root 2 Sep 18 13:24 user
I am doing the backups as my_user
how did this file get created by root and why is it there?? yesterday
about that time I installed TDE, the trinity desktop..

That's an issue I experience very often, IIRC for example a "gksu gedit"
does cause this issue and then Evolution runs into issues too, take a
look at ~/.xsession-errors. After a reboot the permissions are ok again.
I suspect you can change the permissions manually ;), but usually I
experience combinations of issues, that's why I reboot, btw. on Arch
Linux using Xfce4, so it's not Xubuntu related. There are tons of issues
with dbus and gnome apps, dconf, when using Xfce4.

[Paul Cartwright]

Post by Ralf Mardorf
That's an issue I experience very often, IIRC for example a "gksu gedit"
does cause this issue and then Evolution runs into issues too, take a
look at ~/.xsession-errors. After a reboot the permissions are ok again.
I suspect you can change the permissions manually ;), but usually I
experience combinations of issues, that's why I reboot, btw. on Arch
Linux using Xfce4, so it's not Xubuntu related. There are tons of issues
with dbus and gnome apps, dconf, when using Xfce4.

well, I rebooted, and it is still owned by root.
.xsession-errors had lots of stuff in it regarding the trinity install,
setup, but nothing I could find about the cache/user file.

and trying to reboot I got stuck at modem-manager, something about
ttyACM01.. don't remember exactly, but it hung there, so I removed
modemmanager package. Can't remember the last time I used a modem!!

[Ralf Mardorf]

Post by Paul Cartwright

Post by Ralf Mardorf
That's an issue I experience very often, IIRC for example a "gksu gedit"
does cause this issue and then Evolution runs into issues too, take a
look at ~/.xsession-errors. After a reboot the permissions are ok again.
I suspect you can change the permissions manually ;), but usually I
experience combinations of issues, that's why I reboot, btw. on Arch
Linux using Xfce4, so it's not Xubuntu related. There are tons of issues
with dbus and gnome apps, dconf, when using Xfce4.

well, I rebooted, and it is still owned by root.
.xsession-errors had lots of stuff in it regarding the trinity install,
setup, but nothing I could find about the cache/user file.
and trying to reboot I got stuck at modem-manager, something about
ttyACM01.. don't remember exactly, but it hung there, so I removed
modemmanager package. Can't remember the last time I used a modem!!

You could run chown, but I would move .cache/dconf out of the .cache. In
my .cache there's no dconf directory or file. It's just a cache,
sometimes even deleting .cache does solve issues, but to move it is more
save ;).

[Peter Flynn]

Post by Paul Cartwright

Post by Ralf Mardorf
That's an issue I experience very often, IIRC for example a "gksu gedit"
does cause this issue and then Evolution runs into issues too, take a
look at ~/.xsession-errors. After a reboot the permissions are ok again.
I suspect you can change the permissions manually ;), but usually I
experience combinations of issues, that's why I reboot, btw. on Arch
Linux using Xfce4, so it's not Xubuntu related. There are tons of issues
with dbus and gnome apps, dconf, when using Xfce4.

well, I rebooted, and it is still owned by root.

It's a common problem, and I think the devs differ from the users about
how it should be. An install process that invokes root privs will create
conf files etc as root, which IMHO is an error when they are created
under the invoking user's ID. But many people would argue that the user
has no business fiddling with these files, forgetting that other
processes like backup will need to be able to rewrite them.

$ cd ~/; sudo chown -R myname:myname .

///Peter

[Ralf Mardorf]

Post by Peter Flynn
$ cd ~/; sudo chown -R myname:myname .

Assumed there are no files that e.g. should have myname:some_group,
IMO it's better to run

sudo chown -R myname:myname ~/.cache/dconf/