Shouldn't crash when run as user instead of root

[Fernando Miguel]

Binary package hint: landscape-client

i just typed
#landscape-client
on a console it crashed

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/landscape-client
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.5
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: landscape-client 1.0.18-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcAttrCurrent: unconfined
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/landscape-client
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=/root/scripts:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
PythonArgs: ['/usr/bin/landscape-client']
SourcePackage: landscape-client
Title: landscape-client crashed with IOError in __init__()
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-1-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dip fax floppy fuse lpadmin plugdev sambashare scanner sudo tape users video

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

Hi,
did you try that command as a regular user (i.e., yourself?) or root?

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

regular user.

switching to the TTYs I can see it at work.

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

Ok, so landscape-client doesn't work like that. It should be started by root via its initscript at /etc/init.d/landscape-client.

We can, of course, make the error more friendlier, i.e., not crash and give a meaningful error message instead. So, I'm marking this as confirmed, but it's a low priority.

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

Thanks Andreas

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

It could easilly recommend the user to just run landscape-sysinfo

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

So this is our plan:
- change the message about running landscape-config to include "sudo", so it runs as root
- don't blow up if it is run as a regular user

By "it", I mean any landscape-config and landscape-client, and perhaps every other landscape-* binary.

[Stephen Cradock (s-cradock)]

Sounds like a good plan.

Could we users have some information about what the program actually does, and why we would want it?

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

There is landscape-client, which is the client part of Landscape (see http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape), and landscape-sysinfo, which is packaged in landscape-common. The sysinfo part doesn't require a Landscape account and is meant just to give a brief summary of the status of the system whenever users login on a terminal or via ssh.

[Terry (terry-kryogenic)]

I wonder if this should be installed by default anyway? (assuming it will be installed by default) Seems mostly meaningless to anyone unless they have a landscape account and if they do, it's just a simple matter of installing it etc. I know this may not be related to this bug but I do wonder, especially as it's yet another not-needed daemon/service that's starting up during the boot process.

On the other hand, it has highlighted this issue. :)

[Stephen Cradock (s-cradock)]

Thanks Andreas. I second Terry's concern about this being installed by default, and have removed it from my stand-alone system.

[Terry (terry-kryogenic)]

Got this today, latest updates as of about 20 minutes ago which included landscape packages. I did nothing to directly invoke anything to do with landscape myself.

landscape-monitor crashed with IOError in __init__()

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

Terry, so this just popped up in the middle of the upgrade?

[Terry (terry-kryogenic)]

This happened right after rebooting. I've not seen any messages since relating to landscape. Infact I did not get any more messages even after the most recent upgrade of the landscape package.

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

I think we have to give this a higher priority. Because of apport, it's a very visible crash on the desktop, and it would give Landscape a bad name to have suddenly many users reporting it, even though it's not supposed to run with user privileges.

[Christopher Armstrong (radix)]

Merged to trunk

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

The intrepid package change is being worked on on bug #277658

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package landscape-client - 1.0.23-0ubuntu0.8.10

---------------
landscape-client (1.0.23-0ubuntu0.8.10) intrepid; urgency=low

  * New upstream release. (LP: #277658):
    Changes since 1.0.21.1:
    - Don't print duplicate warnings when / is nearing capacity in sysinfo
      (LP: #260230).
    - Slight change to link text in landscape-sysinfo.
    - Don't crash badly when programs are run as the incorrect user
      (LP: #268879).
  * debian/changelog: New debian-version scheme including Ubuntu version. The
    same upstream version is available for all supported releases.
    (LP: #277682).
  * debian/landscape-client.postrm: Delete log and data files upon purge
    (LP: #121182).
  * debian/landscape-common.postrm: Delete the sysinfo logs upon purge.

 -- Christopher Armstrong <email address hidden> Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:40:51 -0400