Opening Preferences shows read error for home

[schamane]

When I open the preferences dialog of gnome-terminal I get a popup window (see screenshot) with the error message "Could not read the contents of home. Permission denied." If I acknowledge the error with a click on OK everything seems to work fine, nonetheless.

One cause for the error message is clear: It's the permissions of /home which I always set to 0711 on shared computers. The error message does not appear when I change permissions to 0755.

I am afraid this error might very well be not a problem of gnome-terminal but of a library or any other shared package. I thought I have seen it appear in other programs too but I could reproduce it only in gnome-terminal. Thus, I hope that reporting it against gnome-terminal at least might help others find this bug. And maybe the developers of gnome-terminal can help to clarify the actual causes.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: gnome-terminal 3.4.1.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-32.51-generic-pae 3.2.30
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-32-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu14
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Nov 3 01:52:39 2012
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-terminal
InstallationMedia: Edubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429.1)
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-10-30 (3 days ago)

[schamane (schamane)]

I'd like to add that

1) This bug can easily be reproduced by means of a standard Ubuntu Live CD. After booting the Live CD check that opening the preferences works without problems. Then enter the command(s)

  ls -od /home; sudo chmod 711 /home; ls -od /home

which should show (apart from the date)

  drwxr-xr-x 1 root 60 Nov 6 2012 /home
  drwx--x--x 1 root 60 Nov 6 2012 /home

Open preferences again and it will show the error message "Could not read the contents of home. Permission denied."

2) I am sorry, but, indeed this bug must be caused by a component that gnome-terminal is using and not by gnome-terminal itself. In the meantime I found another program that shows the same error (soundconverter) and there are probably more.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Pierre (p-laloutre)]

I have the exact same message when I open the preferences dialog in Transmission.

[schamane (schamane)]

It's a bit weird that this hasn't drawn more attention yet. I just realized that this bug appears even in 10.04.4 with e.g. gnome-terminal 2.30. I understand that most people run their mostly personal boxes with world readable /home. But what's with server admins?

[Pierre (p-laloutre)]

Thing that's surprise me is that I have a very basic install of ubuntu, using unity.

My Home folder is encrypted though. Maybe that's the problem ?

When I try to access the folder /home in nautilus I have the message "The folder contents could not be displayed. You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of "home"."

---

So I decided to change the chmod of the /home folder from
drwxr-x--x 5 root root 4096 Nov 11 16:18 .
to
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Nov 11 16:18 .

I don't have the error anymore when I open the preference dialog in transmission, or when I try to print from Firefox, so I guess it's working fine now but... Is it a good fix ? Is the chmod suposed to be in drwxr-xr-x ?

[schamane (schamane)]

@Pierre (p-lebedel):

I don't know how things behave in case of encrypted home folders. Though, if the default permissions of /home are drwxr-x--x (0711), then the bug triggers.

Changing permissions to drwxr-xr-x (0755) is perfectly fine if you can live with it. However, in some cases (shared environments, server setups etc.) the administrator will want to tighten the permissions to 0711.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to review all reported bugs in a timely manner.

Ubuntu 12.04 (precise) reached end-of-life on April 28, 2017.

Do you still see a problem related to the one that you reported in a currently supported version of Ubuntu? Please let us know if you do and in which version of Ubuntu otherwise this report can be left to expire in approximately 60 days time.

Thank you for helping make Ubuntu better.

Paul White
[Ubuntu Bug Squad]

[schamane (schamane)]

I have tried to reproduce the bug in Ubuntu 18.10, Ubuntu 18.04.1 and Lubuntu 18.04.1. In none of the 3 systems the bug showed.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thanks schamane. I'll mark this as "Fix Released" on the basis that you could confirm this problem with a Live CD and the report was confirmed by another user.