Bug 23673

Summary:	pkexec fails to run X applications
Product:	PolicyKit	Reporter:	Michael Biebl <mbiebl>
Component:	daemon	Assignee:	David Zeuthen (not reading bugmail) <zeuthen>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	David Zeuthen (not reading bugmail) <zeuthen>
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Michael Biebl 2009-09-03 00:19:35 UTC

When I try to run a X application via pkexec, I get:
$ pkexec gedit

(process:27724): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: g_simple_async_result_complete() called from outside main loop!

(process:27724): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: g_simple_async_result_complete() called from outside main loop!

(process:27724): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: g_simple_async_result_complete() called from outside main loop!

(process:27724): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: g_simple_async_result_complete() called from outside main loop!

(process:27724): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: g_simple_async_result_complete() called from outside main loop!

(process:27724): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: g_simple_async_result_complete() called from outside main loop!

(gedit:27724): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

Comment 1 Michael Biebl 2009-09-03 00:37:31 UTC

Used versions:
polkit: 0.94
polkit-gnome: 0.94

Comment 2 David Zeuthen (not reading bugmail) 2009-09-13 10:52:13 UTC

This is kinda on purpose, the man page says

  The environment that PROGRAM will run it, will be set to a minimal
  known and safe environment in order to avoid injecting code through
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH or similar mechanisms. In addition the PKEXEC_UID
  environment variable is set to the user id of the process invoking
  pkexec. As a result, pkexec will not allow you to run e.g. X11
  applications as another user since the $DISPLAY environment variable is
  not set.

The source has a comment about it

    /* For now, avoiding pretend that running X11 apps as another user in the same session
     * will ever work... See
     *
     *  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17970#c26
     *
     * and surrounding comments for a lot of discussion about this.
     */
#if 0
    "DESKTOP_STARTUP_ID",
    "DISPLAY",
    "XAUTHORITY",
    "DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS",
    "ORBIT_SOCKETDIR",
#endif

so it's easy to enable if you really want this... I'm not sure it's a good idea however.

Comment 3 David Zeuthen (not reading bugmail) 2009-11-30 08:59:37 UTC

Update: someone on the list asked about this - this was my reply

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/polkit-devel/2009-November/000264.html

Executive summary: would be nice to have but probably too much work and too many unanswered questions.

Comment 4 David Zeuthen (not reading bugmail) 2011-08-01 06:45:30 UTC


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 38769 ***

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