kate creates ~/.kde/share/apps/kate folder with wrong ownership if used with sudo for first time

[Mike Gashler]

Binary package hint: kate

I installed Hardy Kubuntu Beta (w/ KDE3). Immediately after installation, I used "sudo kate" to edit some config file. Now, the the ~/.kde/share/apps/kate folder is owned by root instead of me. If I run kate normally, I can't save config changes (b/c it doesn't have permission to access its own folder), and there is no indication of why it doesn't work--(it took me some time to figure it out). If kate is going to put its configuration in my home folder, then it should be owned by me. I tried this on another machine and it repro'ed there too. (An obvious workaround is to do "sudo chown me:me ~/.kde/share/apps/kate", but new users won't know to do that.)

[Ralph Janke (txwikinger)]

I can confirm this on the released hardy.

It is reproducible by deleting the folder ~/.kde/share/apps/kate and then starting kate with sudo. The ownership of the newly created folder is root:root

[Ubottu Automated Bug Reporting - Ubuntu (ubottu-ubuntu-bugs)]

The answer is not to use sudo with GUI apps. Using kdesu and kdesudo will stop that from happening.

[Terence Simpson (tsimpson)]

Umm, in case you're wondering, that message was actually from me :)

[Mike Gashler (gashlerm)]

Using kdesudo isn't a better work-around than just running the app as yourself the first time you run it. The problem is that there is no indication to inform people that they should operate in this manner, so it's still a trap for people that don't know better. If someone uses sudo the first time, kdesudo won't fix the problem.

[Terence Simpson (tsimpson)]

It's always recommended not to run GUI apps with sudo, if you have a idea of how to get this recommendation out to more people then let me know.
There really isn't anything we can do about this problem, it's simply because you're running for the first time and it's creating config files, but you're running it as root and so they will be owned by root. kdesudo will not have this problem because it does the appropriate set up before running any commands so it won't interfere with files in your $HOME

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Won't fix.
There is a report about proper sudo behavior for GUI apps, but as it is 3:44 in the morning you might excuse that I don't feel like looking it up ;-)