Additional information: premise: p1) I made a test changing the owner and group of the /tmp/at-spi2/ folder with the user logged-in solve the problem. Maybe it was granted, but it tried anyway p2) Evince seem to work fine, I never detected problems reading pdf file during normal work. This error does not seem to affect the entire program operation. Based on of my knowledge I have tried to verify the requirements requested by Jamie Strandboge: a1) the environment and /tmp/at-spi2/: considering what I have discovered a way to change the environment connected to the '/tmp/at-spi2/' is to define XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, but this variable is not defined, the command env|grep XDG produce: XDG_SESSION_COOKIE=023e99a7ae9aa1d1d49fde2300000008-1393614529.236409-511883369 XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg/xdg-gnome-shell:/etc/xdg XDG_DATA_DIRS=/usr/share/gnome-shell:/usr/share/gnome:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/ XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME This is certainly not exhaustive but that's what I was able to discover about this a2) why is evince trying to chmod it? I don't know the internal reasons of evince but this operation is always done even when it is launched from the command without opening a pdf file directly. I made an strace of evince launch from commnad line, a simple evince, and these are the interesting lines: ... recvmsg(11, 0x7fff3dbbb490, MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable) eventfd2(0, O_NONBLOCK|O_CLOEXEC) = 12 write(12, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8 fstat(11, {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0777, st_size=0, ...}) = 0 fcntl(11, F_GETFL) = 0x802 (flags O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK) write(4, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8 brk(0x7f6836ff0000) = 0x7f6836ff0000 brk(0x7f6836fef000) = 0x7f6836fef000 sendmsg(11, {msg_name(0)=NULL, msg_iov(2)=[{"l\1\1\1Y\0\0\0\2\0\0\0\177\0\0\0\1\1o\0\25\0\0\0/org/fre"..., 144}, {"T\0\0\0type='signal', interface='or"..., 89}], msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 233 sendmsg(11, {msg_name(0)=NULL, msg_iov(2)=[{"l\1\1\1d\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\177\0\0\0\1\1o\0\25\0\0\0/org/fre"..., 144}, {"_\0\0\0type='signal', interface='or"..., 100}], msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 244 sendmsg(11, {msg_name(0)=NULL, msg_iov(2)=[{"l\1\0\0010\0\0\0\4\0\0\0\202\0\0\0\1\1o\0\37\0\0\0/org/a11"..., 152}, {"\5\0\0\0:1.38\0\0\0\37\0\0\0/org/a11y/atspi/"..., 48}], msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 200 * mkdir("/tmp/at-spi2/", 01777) = -1 EEXIST (File exists) * chmod("/tmp/at-spi2/", 01777) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied) socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_STREAM|SOCK_CLOEXEC, 0) = 13 * stat("/tmp/at-spi2/socket-4587-1804289383", 0x7fff3dbbb550) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) setsockopt(13, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, [1], 4) = 0 * bind(13, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/tmp/at-spi2/socket-4587-1804289383"}, 37) = 0 listen(13, 30) = 0 fcntl(13, F_GETFL) = 0x2 (flags O_RDWR) fcntl(13, F_SETFL, O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK) = 0 * chmod("/tmp/at-spi2/socket-4587-1804289383", 0777) = 0 open("/dev/urandom", O_RDONLY) = 14 read(14, "\320\262\323\266\243\246\206\214\331G\v\330", 12) = 12 close(14) = 0 fstat(13, {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0777, st_size=0, ...}) = 0 fcntl(13, F_GETFL) = 0x802 (flags O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK) write(4, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8 openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib/evince/4/backends", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 14 getdents(14, /* 14 entries */, 32768) = 584 open("/usr/lib/evince/4/backends/dvidocument.evince-backend", O_RDONLY) = 15 ... only five lines marked with '*' contain a reference to /tmp/at-spi2 folder That's all for now. No one else who follows this bug has been dealing with a similar problem? Many thanks to all !!!