When I click to open either my synaptic package manager or my add programs thingy, it makes the noise like it is opening, and sometimes I see it looks like a window shrinking down to nothing in the bottom of the screen (like when you minimize a window, only there's no minimized window). It's frustrating. Can anyone give me an idea how to fix this? I tried doing an update by using my terminal and apt-get update/upgrade - you know, however that's done. I have no idea what happened; mom mom also uses my puter and has no idea what she's doing or may have done, and since I am new I've been messing with things in Ubuntu and very well may have done it myself :-(

i would recommend opening synaptic from the command line. then you'll see the error messages and you can post them here........


open a terminal and type "sudo synaptic"

cherylly@68-170-101-68:~$ sudo synaptic
sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 1000, should be 0
cherylly@68-170-101-68:~$
Dunno what that means :-/

Check the the UID of /etc/sudoers. It should belong to root. I assume that your UID is 1000, so did you edit the file without visudo?

Cheers--
Charles

basicall you need to do "chown root /etc/sudoers" as root

ever user has a "uid". root's is 0. as mentioned about yours if probably 1000

Teehee. I changed the ownership of my /etc/users once when I was trying to run a faq that was zipped, and it wouldn't let me. Now when I tried sudo synaptic it opened my synaptic package thing, and also said : (synaptic:25460): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_accel_label_set_accel_closure: assertion `gtk_accel_group_from_accel_closure (accel_closure) != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_accel_label_set_accel_closure: assertion `gtk_accel_group_from_accel_closure (accel_closure) != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data: assertion `width > 0' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale: assertion `src != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data: assertion `width > 0' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale: assertion `src != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data: assertion `height > 0' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale: assertion `src != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data: assertion `height > 0' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale: assertion `src != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data: assertion `width > 0' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale: assertion `src != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new_from_data: assertion `width > 0' failed

(synaptic:25460): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale: assertion `src != NULL' failed

(synaptic:25460): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed


I still cannot open it from my system list and I still cannot open my add applications. I dunno what all that stuff means.

You need to make sure that your sudoers file is roots. You need, too, to make sure that you haven't updated the system with packages that break GTK. What package did you add immediately before things broke? Make sure, too, that all the files gnome needs have the right permissions.

Cheers--
Charles

Ok, well my sudoers file is root. As for the rest...huh? What is GTK and what could have broken it? Gnome? Which files might those be? Huh?