inexplicable permission problems when creating dir or overwriting files

[frankwhofmann]

Binary package hint: evince

evince is having permission problems when writing to the filesystem.
this occurs in either of the following use cases:
1) user wants to create a new sub directory to store the file in, but creating sub dir is rejected saying "permission denied"; storing in the existing parent directory succeeds.
2) user wants to overwrite existing file: "Error renaming temporary file: permission denied"

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: evince 2.30.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Apr 18 21:03:43 2010
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evince
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100318)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evince
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1297): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_format_get_name: assertion `format != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1297): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_format_get_name: assertion `format != NULL' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1314): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1297): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_format_get_name: assertion `format != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1297): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_format_get_name: assertion `format != NULL' failed

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

that might be an appamor issue: log says:

Apr 18 21:03:13 laptop007 kernel: [ 3838.886555] type=1503 audit(1271617393.402:29): operation="rename_src" pid=2713 parent=1 profile="/usr/bin/evince" requested_mask="r::" denied_mask="r::" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000 name="/home2/hofmann2/PERSISTENT/WORKSPACES/INCENTOR-OFFICE/DOCS/020_Gewerbeanmeldung/.goutputstream-7JUHBV"

I'm subscribing Jamie, he might know what's the issue here, Thanks for reporting Frank.

[FP (fabrice-pardo)]

Apparmor issue indeed. It doesn't take in account special home location,
even if the information is in /etc/password. A workaround is to reconfigure it:
 sudo dpkg-reconfigure apparmor
and put /home2 as "Additional home directory locations"

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

FP,

Your method is not a workaround, but the correct method to configure your system since you are using an alternate location for HOME. You may also adjust /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/home or /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/home.d/ubuntu directly.

There is logic when apparmor is installed or upgraded to update the HOME tunables automatically, but administrators who use an alternate location for HOME for new users need to update the tunables as you did. This is documented

Marking the bug as Invalid as this is a system-dependent non-default configuration issue which is discussed in the release notes for Ubuntu 10.04.