Odd permissions on $HOME/.config/nautilus-actions make the directory unreadable by the owner

[Stefan Lasiewski]

The directory $HOME/.config/nautilus-actions has odd permissions. The owner of the directory cannot read the contents of this directory.

$ ls -ld ~/.config/nautilus-actions/
d-wxr-xr-T 2 stefanl stefanl 4096 May 10 08:55 /home/stefanl/.config/nautilus-actions/
$ ls -l ~/.config/nautilus-actions/
ls: cannot open directory /home/stefanl/.config/nautilus-actions/: Permission denied

$ cd $HOME/.config/nautilus-actions/
$ ls -la
ls: cannot open directory .: Permission denied

As a result, backup programs such as 'deja-dup' and 'backintime' will fail. Any command which scans the users home directory will complain.

Here is a simple example using the 'find' command:

stefanl@gondor:~ $ find $HOME >/dev/null
find: `/home/stefanl/.config/nautilus-actions': Permission denied

This is a subdirectory within a users home directory which cannot be read by the user. That seems wrong, and makes me uncomfortable from a security standpoint. Malware could install itself to this directory since the user has write permissions. However, the user would have trouble detecting this malware within the directory since they do not have read permissions.

This looks like a bug to me. If it is not a bug, then can someone please justify this behavior?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[François Rey (fmjrey)]

Could this be happening as a result of a nautilus crash? My system has been unstable (i.e. some system program crash) since upgrading to 12.04, so I'm considering a fresh install of 12.04.

[Daan W. (dwynen)]

I stumbled over this with DejaDup because it cannot read the content of the file and tells me that backup is not complete (which is correct because of this bug).
So any user using DajaDup will most probably stumble over this if it occurs.

[Miguel Prada (miguel-prada-sarasola)]

Same error here, also found because of Back In Time failing to perform a backup. Funny thing is that it did work two days ago, so it must've been introduced by some recent update, I guess.

chmod'ing the file solves the issue for now.

[Gianfranco Cecconi (giacecco)]

Same exact problem, Back In Time issue and workadound as Miguel Prada's above. I am on Ubuntu 12.04 32 bit, updated to the latest packages this morning at ~ 9am BST.

Linux 3.2.0-27-generic-pae #43-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 6 15:06:05 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[Tom Wieczorek (twz123)]

I'm also affected. The odd permissions on my machine were introduced by the release upgrade to precise I did last weekend. Since then, all of my Back In Time backups failed completely. (Perhaps this should be filed as a bug against BIT - it doesn't make sense to toss away the complete backup just because there is one single file/folder which cannot be backed up.)

[Till W. (tillw.)]

I'm also affected. I noticed the odd permissions today after a DejaDup error message. Interestingly, the permissions must have been right 11 days ago when I did the last backup on this machine, since I did not get an error message then.

[MestreLion (mestrelion)]

A workaround for this problem is to chmod it back to sane permissions:

$ chmod 755 ~/.config/nautilus-actions

But it would be good if developers investigate on *why* such weird permissions were set in the first place.

Also worth filing a bug to DejaDup so it doesn't choke on non-readable files/dirs, and simply skip them. Was this done already?

[Dude4Linux (dude4linux)]

I stumbled across this bug while researching why tracker-miner-fs has been failing ever since I upgraded to 12.04.
I changed the permissions using

$ chmod u+r ~/.config/nautilus-actions

not wanting to disturb the other permissions

$ ls -ld ~/.config/nautilus-actions
drwxr-xr-T 2 dude dude 4096 Mar 31 12:28 /home/dude/.config/nautilus-actions

I'm now checking to see if other users were affected, and waiting to see if tracker-miner-fs behaves.

[Dude4Linux (dude4linux)]

List all users affected by the ?bug?

$ sudo find /home -name 'nautilus-actions' | grep '.config/nautilus-actions' | sudo xargs ls -ld

Modify the permissions

$ sudo find /home -name 'nautilus-actions' | grep '.config/nautilus-actions' | sudo xargs chmod u+r

[Stefan Lasiewski (stefanlasiewski)]

@Dude4Linux: A few notes:

- On my system, the root user is also affected by this bug. Your find command doesn't scan root's home directory, but can be easily modified.
- Find can detect certain permissions with the `-perm` flag. No need for pipes, xargs or a second sudo.

This command will list all instances of 'nautilus-actions' where the 'user' does not have 'read' permission:

sudo find /root /home -name 'nautilus-actions' -not -perm /u=r -ls

A similar command utilizing the `-exec` flag can also fix the problem. Something like this should work, but I have not tested this well so be warned:

sudo find /root /home -name 'nautilus-actions' -not -perm /u=r -ls -exec chmod --verbose u+r {} \;

[dpel (d-pelletier)]

3 years & 3 months later, this bug still has a status of Confirmed? This issues still exists and is effecting other users of Ubuntu precise. I discovered it when I tried to do a backup (backintime) of home directories. As described by Stefan, even root has this strange non 'r' permission issue (verified by `sudo find /root /home -name 'nautilus-actions' -not -perm /u=r -ls`).

No one has confrimed either, whether `chmod u+r ~/.config/nautilus-actions` will cause issues down the road (you would not think so, but nevertheless). It is an empty directory unless you have run the Nautilus-Actions Configuration Tool. Did installing Nautilus-Actions Configuration tool create this directory and set faulty permissions?

[Jean-Marie PIVETEAU (jean-marie-piveteau)]

Hello,

I discover I have the same problem.

OS: Ubuntu 18.04.4

ls -ld .config/nautilus-actions/:
d-wxr-xr-T 2 jmp jmp 4096 déc. 10 2018 .config/nautilus-actions/

sudo ls -al .config/nautilus-actions/:
d-wxr-xr-T 2 jmp jmp 4096 déc. 10 2018 .
drwxr-xr-x 62 jmp jmp 4096 juin 7 16:37 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jmp jmp 35 déc. 10 2018 nautilus-actions.conf