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Nimlot

Member

Registered: 2013-02-12

Posts: 24

[SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

I typically run SDDM and Cinnamon. After a recent update, whenever I try to start Cinnamon, a dialog pops up that says:

Could not update ICEauthority file /ICEauthority

And the only option is to log out.

There is no file at /ICEauthority on my machine. I tried touching the file as my user account and as root, but neither fixed the problem.

I tried launching Cinnamon with startx rather than SDDM. The same dialog pops up and Cinnamon also prints a message to the terminal:

WARNING: t+20.01653s: IceLockAuthFile failed: Permission denied

I also tried removing and reinstalling Cinnamon.

Any suggestions about things to check, try, or otherwise diagnose and fix this are much appreciated.

Last edited by Nimlot (2023-01-04 09:40:29)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

For some reason the system seems to

grep $USER /etc/passwd
stat $HOME

Do you use systemd-homed?

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Nimlot

Member

Registered: 2013-02-12

Posts: 24

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

I don't currently use systemd-homed (systemctl reports the service is disabled, and I don't remember ever enabling it).

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

Good - (or "bad", it would have been an easy fall guy)
Did you check the condition of your $HOME?

For some reason the system seems to

… think that your $HOME is on the root directory.

I kinda got distracted and picked up after the gap

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Nimlot

Member

Registered: 2013-02-12

Posts: 24

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

Output from `stat $HOME`:

  File: /home/nick
  Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 8,6     Inode: 4194305     Links: 72
Access: (0700/drwx------)  Uid: ( 1000/    nick)   Gid: ( 1000/    nick)
Access: 2023-01-03 15:01:54.401583227 -0800
Modify: 2023-01-03 14:07:00.103904739 -0800
Change: 2023-01-03 14:07:00.103904739 -0800
Birth: 2016-01-16 16:22:37.775905734 -0800

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

And are there and suspicious token in /etc/passwd (fyi, despite the name there are no passwords or other sensitive data inside that file)
If you create a new user, does it show the same behavior (ie. is this your config or some weird bug in cinnamon)?

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Nimlot

Member

Registered: 2013-02-12

Posts: 24

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

Yes, looks like something is funny with my config: I created a new user and Cinnamon ran without error.

Output from `grep $USER /etc/passwd`:

17:nick:x:1000:1000::/home/nick:/bin/bash

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

"17:" - grep is hopefully a "grep -n" alias on your system??
Other than that it looks harmless enough.

Let's see whether there're foreign files in your $HOME

find $HOME \! -user nick -print

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Nimlot

Member

Registered: 2013-02-12

Posts: 24

Re: [SOLVED] Cinnamon ICEauthority Error

Well I feel silly. I figured out that it's because I was setting the ICEAUTHORITY environment variable to:

${XDG_CACHE_DIR}/ICEauthority

And apparently XDG_CACHE_DIR has been renamed XDG_CACHE_HOME. I'll have to be more careful about how I set ICEAUTHORITY, if I set it at all.

Thanks for your help seth!