usb-creator does not work when $HOME is on NFS

[Magnus Runesson]

Binary package hint: usb-creator

$HOME is NFS-mounted and the clients root-user has no right on the NFS-server.

usb-creator tries to write .usb-creator.log in users home directory but are not alloewd to write to users home. usb-creator crashes.

$ usb-creator
  File "/usr/bin/usb-creator", line 40, in <module>
    f = GtkFrontend()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/usbcreator/gtk_frontend.py", line 52, in __init__
    self.backend = Backend(self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/usbcreator/backend.py", line 87, in __init__
    self.logger = Logger()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/usbcreator/backend.py", line 33, in __init__
    self.fp = open(log_file, 'a')
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home/magru/.usb-creator.log'
Exception exceptions.AttributeError: "Logger instance has no attribute 'fp'" in <bound method Logger.__del__ of <usbcreator.backend.Logger instance at 0x1f80710>> ignored

$ usb-creator --version
0.1.8

~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10

$ apt-cache policy usb-creator
usb-creator:
  Installed: 0.1.10
  Candidate: 0.1.10
  Version table:
 *** 0.1.10 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Workaround
=========
$ sudo -s
# export SUDO_USER=root
# usb-creator

[Martti Kuparinen (mk1970)]

I confirm this, my NFS client is Ubuntu 9.04...

[Victor Costan (costan)]

A possible fix is to write the log file to /var/log/usb-creator.log instead of ~/.usb_creator.log if the user is root.

The fix is easy, in usbcreator/backend.py:28-29
replace with: log_file = '/var/log/usb-creator.log'

I've attached the modified file. I couldn't figure out how to generate a patch quickly. The Code tab in launchpad let me download a .tar.gz, so you're getting a modified file. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[kaleissin (kaleissin)]

I have the same problem.

Another "workaround" is to make the file (.usb-creator.log) manually, then make it writeable for all... so: needs to be fixed.

[Evan (ev)]

This is fixed in 0.2.7 (released in Karmic). usb-creator is run as a regular users and tries to write its log to ~/.usbcreator.log. If it fails to do so, it writes to stdout.