gParted will only run in terminal
 

Hi all

I installed gParted from this link: https://www.bodhilinux.com/a/gparted/

It installed OK, and an entry appeared in the menu, but when I click on the menu entry I get an eSudo request window to enter my password, and then nothing. It just seems to stop.

I can run it from the terminal by typing sudo gparted and it seems to run just fine.

If it's only supposed to run from the terminal then there's no point having the menu entry, so I presume that it's supposed to run from the menu.

I'm using Bodhi Linux 5.0, legacy (32 bit) version.

Any ideas?

Bob

mine does the same. i had been meaning to ask the same question :)

It's beginning to look like my role here is ask those questions that others had meant to ask, but never got around to... (grin)

I know this one! You have to reinstall esudo. This affected synaptic too.

unfortunately that didn't work on mine, but thank you for the suggestion :)

Nor on mine, either.

I don't know if it's relevant but when I start from the terminal, it also says:

Unit - .mount does not exist, proceeding anyway

libparted : 3.2

i get that same message. just tried a simple volume label change and it worked, so i am pretty sure gparted is at least working from the terminal.

Wow. You're right. This worked before, but gparted is not opening for me from menu anymore either, after entering password. weird. Yeah I also don't have .mount

hmm, interesting.

I think, Ylee will answer more skilled than me but I have found a simple workaround

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/gparted.desktop

Change the exec entry this way:
Exec=pkexec /usr/sbin/gparted %f

Stefan

skill is as skill does, that fixed mine :)

using the same syntax also fixed the problem for gsmartcontrol. thanks doubled!

cool :)

Thanks Stefan. This sorted it out for me, too. Furthermore, it answered another question I was thinking about asking...

ask all of the questions! :D seriously though, thanks for bringing this up.

Explaining the behavior:

Policy kit is attaching the command line argument -disable-internal-agent to gparted but Bodhi's esudo is acting as the function pkexec and it does not accept the argument. Hence gparted fails to start as will any program using policy kit doing the same thing. I have been aware of the conflict between esudo and pkexec (as well as issues using it as a drop in substitute for gksudo) for some time. I have been somewhat reluctant to either alter the policy kit stuff ubuntu installs or to hack or alter esudo to work better with policy kit.

Workarounds:
Stefan's work around is fine and the easiest. But it has the downside that altering the desktop files of broken apps trying to use policy kit has to be done for every such app you install. Somewhat more difficult is to actually use pkexec as intended. I am not going into that here but that is what i do. It should be noted that efl has its own policy kit authentication agent, polkit-efl but I have never tried it. I suppose another way would be to alter esudo to ignore any and all pkexec command line arguments. Other workarounds such as altering or removing policy kit I am going to ignore as they are probably a bad idea unless you really know you are doing.

Notes:
I know none of this is ideal and i am open to ideas on how to fix this. I have suggested to Jeff we try not to break pkexec with esudo esp for users of Bodhi who also use other desktops, but he opted as he usually does for the simplest solution. Contact me personally if ya have any better ideas to avoid spamming this support thread ;) Just be aware I have considered the pros and cons of a number of potential solutions and found none I truly felt comfortable with.