opening existing file with gksu gedit creates untitled document

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

When opening a text file as super user, using gksu gedit ...., the requested file opens, along with a second, untitled document. This is slightly annoying, since gedit will ask if the untitled document should be saved once the desired file has been edited and gedit is closed. Opening a file as a regular user does not have this problem.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gedit 3.1.4-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.15-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Aug 31 14:12:52 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
SourcePackage: gedit
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-08-26 (4 days ago)

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

Quote comment from upstream developer:
< You shouldn't start GNOME programmes with elevated privileges, it's not
supported. In any case, not a gnome-terminal bug. >

[Sean Fitzpatrick (sean-fitzpatrick)]

I see. So does that make the official GNOME position "editing system files should be done with nano or similar" or "system files? why would a user want to edit a system file?"

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

Yep, from my understanding they don't agree with running graphical apps as root. Bug #805682

[david6 (andrew-dowden)]

Does this mean (based on Bug #805682) we should:

(a.) henceforth use sudo gedit systemfile (with some security issues)

OR,

(b.) agitate for this to be fixed, and soon.

??

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

I don't dispute that this bug is a duplicate of bug 796076, but I am posting here to address some advice from david6 which is potentially dangerous if applied.

It is a bad idea to run graphical programs that save user-specific configuration data, like gedit, with sudo (without special flags to make it behave like those programs[1]) rather than gksu/gksudo/kdesudo. But not for security reasons. This is a bad idea because such programs often create or modify configuration data in such a way that the configuration files are accessible only by root, and then the application is fully or partially broken when run by the user unprivileged. (This could then become a security problem if the configuration data contained secret information which was then oversimplistically changed back to be owned by the non-root user, but I am not aware of any situation where this has been a problem, especially since such users are usually administrators who are permitted to read the data anyway.) See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo for details.

[1] Actually, those programs are graphical frontends for sudo, and they make sudo behave properly by passing special flags such as -H. (But it is a bit more complex than that, so you may still experience some problems if you run sudo -H instead of gksu/gksudo/kdesudo.)