pcmanfm presents spurious "Permission denied" message as root

[Eliah Kagan]

Binary package hint: pcmanfm

On a Maverick amd64 system, PCManFM displays a spurious "Permission denied" message when accessing the user's home directory with privileges elevated to root.

Steps to reproduce:
(1) Open a PCManFM window.
(2) Navigate to the current user's home directory (if not already there).
(3) Click Tools > Open Current Folder as Root
(4) Authenticate (if necessary)

Then a message box with the title "Error" and the message "Permission denied" is displayed. Clicking OK dismisses the message box and populates the view with the contents of the home directory, which are fully accessible. (So the message displayed is incorrect.)

This also occurs navigating to the current user's home directory from another directory, including a subdirectory of it, and is not limited to PCManFM root windows spawned from windows displaying the current user's home directory. For example, the following sequence also produces the spurious error message:

(1) Open a new PCManFM window.
(2) If this window displays the current user's home directory, navigate to some other directory.
(3) Click Tools > Open Current Folder as Root
(4) Authenticate (if necessary)
(5) Navigate to the current non-root user's home directory (i.e. the home directory belonging to the user that spawned the superuser pcmanfm instance)

This does *not* occur when entering a subdirectory of the current user's home directory, even from a directory other than the current user's home directory.

This occurs for all users on the system, accessing their own home directories. It does not occur for any user attempting to access another user's home directory.

The amd64 Maverick system on which I am reporting this has the following possibly relevant package versions:

pcmanfm 0.9.7-1ubuntu1
libfm0 0.1.12-1ubuntu2
libfm-gtk0 0.1.12-1ubuntu2

I am able to reproduce this bug on an i386 Maverick system with these package versions:

pcmanfm 0.9.7-1ubuntu1
libfm0 0.1.13~git20100910.is.0.1.12-1ubuntu2
libfm-gtk0 0.1.13~git20100910.is.0.1.12-1ubuntu2

And an i386 Natty system with these package versions:

pcmanfm 0.9.8-1
libfm0 0.1.14-2ubuntu1
libfm-gtk0 0.1.14-2ubuntu1

This problem does not appear to be related to the file permissions on the current user's home directory (and in any case, no file permissions should produce this behavior for root...or for any user, since the error message should only come up if the directory is truly inaccessible). On the amd64 Maverick system:

ek@Apok:~$ ls -ld ~
drwxr-x--- 96 ek ek 12288 2010-12-08 09:13 /home/ek

And on the i386 Maverick system:

ek@Kip:~$ ls -ld ~
drwxr-xr-x 24 ek ek 4096 2010-12-08 13:10 /home/ek

And on the i386 Natty system:

ek@Zim:~$ ls -ld ~
drwxr-xr-x 28 ek ek 4096 2010-12-08 13:20 /home/ek

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: pcmanfm 0.9.7-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.41-generic 2.6.35.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-23-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Dec 8 12:27:13 2010
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/pcmanfm
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100406)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US.utf8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: pcmanfm

[Naveen Agarwal (nav.coder)]

Thanks for reporting this bug. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Lubuntu better!

[Naveen Agarwal (nav.coder)]

Summary :

+PCManFM displays a "Permission denied" message when accessing the user's home directory with privileges elevated to root.

[Julien Lavergne (gilir)]

Confirmed on Lubuntu 11.10 (uptodate on 2011/09/18). Forwarded upstream.

[amjjawad  (amjjawad)]

Lubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 - 32-bit

[Toscho (ich)]

Confirmed on Lubuntu 12.04 (2012-05-08)

[ibere fernandes (ibere-fernandes)]

Bug is fixed on Lubuntu 12.10 running from Vbox.

Screen shots attached.

[ibere fernandes (ibere-fernandes)]

still fixed at 13.10 build 20130626.. tks!

[ibere fernandes (ibere-fernandes)]

another way to reproduce on 12.04 is:

1) open a terminal
2) type gksudo pcmanfm

3) pcmanfm will open as root at your home folder and you'll see the error message.

[amjjawad  (amjjawad)]

Do we still have this bug???

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

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