Arch Linux

Markus.N2

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2013-08-22

Posts: 106

[SOLVED] XFCE: running GUI apps as root cannot save preferences

Hi,
I rarely need to use GUI applications as root. Mostly it's meld (graphical folder compare).

Now, I've installed Arch on a new machine, and when I used meld do compare config files from my old machine with the new one, I noticed that meld does not save it's preferences anymore. However, on the old machine there are some saved preferences from long time ago, so this issue must be something relatively new. But as my last usage of meld as root is very long ago, I can't tell when it was introduced.

After some research on the web, it seems the issue is caused by gconf. Unfortunately, the offered solutions don't work on Arch. They say you need to install dbus-x11. On Arch, I could not find such a package.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Last edited by Markus.N2 (2020-05-22 23:36:26)

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: running GUI apps as root cannot save preferences

This here works:

sudo dbus-launch meld ...

I don't know if this is a good idea. I heard something about 'sudo' being bad to use for graphical applications.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,392

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: running GUI apps as root cannot save preferences

After some research on the web, it seems the issue is caused by gconf. Unfortunately, the offered solutions don't work on Arch. They say you need to install dbus-x11. On Arch, I could not find such a package.

It does exist, https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dbus-x11 .

Keep in mind though that you'll have to remove archlinux dbus in order to use dbus-x11 .
Since dbus is an important part of your system replacing it with a non-supported implementation can cause all kinds of problems.

I suggest you check https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ru … ns_as_root first .

If the main reason you use meld-as-root are pacnew / pacsave and similar files , you could also consider running a console diff program while logged in as root in a tty.

pacman-contrib has pacdiff , my personal choice for this task is mcdiff from Midnight Commander.

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

Markus.N2

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2013-08-22

Posts: 106

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: running GUI apps as root cannot save preferences

@Ropid
dbus-launch worked for me too.

@Lone_Wolf
Oh, dbus-x11 is in the AUR ... that's why I did not find it. I only looked using pacman -Ss. As the dbus-launch method works, I will stay with dbus.

Well ... As I wrote in my post, I use it only rarely. In that case, I compared the whole /etc of two machines. I really did not want to do this non-graphical. And yes, Sometimes I also use if for pacnew / pacsave. I just did not notice the "cannot save preferences" issue because for that purpose the old saved preferences were suitable.

I'll take a look at pacdiff, but I won't use Midnight Commander. I just don't like the Commander concept. I already didn't like Norton Commander on MSDOS.