gnome-system-tools malfunction

Could you explain the method you used to upgrade from Dapper to Edgy?

gksu "update-manager -c"

Can you open a terminal and test a few things and report back the results? - Applications --> Accessories --> Terminal.

whoami
groups
tail -n 3 /etc/sudoers
sudo -s
whoami

Here's what happens here when I do that - just for your reference:-

alan@wopr:~$ whoami
alan
alan@wopr:~$ groups
alan root adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev lpadmin scanner admin
alan@wopr:~$ tail -n 3 /etc/sudoers

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
alan@wopr:~$ sudo -s
Password:
root@wopr:~# whoami
root

stefan@chibisuke:~$ whoami
stefan
stefan@chibisuke:~$ groups
users adm dialout fax cdrom floppy tape audio dip video plugdev lpadmin scanner admin
stefan@chibisuke:~$ tail -n 3 /etc/sudoers
tail: cannot open `/etc/sudoers' for reading: Permission denied
stefan@chibisuke:~$ sudo -s
Password:
root@chibisuke:~# whoami
root

Here's what the sudoers file look like with the provided command as root if you're interested:

root@chibisuke:~# tail -n 3 /etc/sudoers

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

Ok, can you do one more command:-

ls -l /etc/sudoers

Here's what I get:-

alan@wopr:~$ ls -l /etc/sudoers
-r--r----- 1 root root 403 2006-11-14 21:55 /etc/sudoers

If your permissions ( the bit at the start "-r--r-----") does not look like that then you can fix it like this:-

sudo -s (to become root)
chmod 440 /etc/sudoers

If the ownership (the "root root" bit) does not look like mine then you can fix it like this:-

sudo -s
chown root:root /etc/sudoers

Once done you can CTRL+D to get back to your account then try sudo/gksu/gksudo and the other system tools to see if this fixed it.

root@chibisuke:~# ls -l /etc/sudoers
-r--r----- 1 root root 406 Jul 2 2005 /etc/sudoers

The permissions looks just like yours. Don't think that's the problem really.
gksu/sudo etc works, it's the gnome-system-tools package that seems strange.
Dunno what's wrong though.

Here's the complete errormessage that i get from trying to run a admin tool in that package:

(network-admin:23399): GnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to session
manager:
Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols
specified are supported and host-based authentication failed.

(network-admin:23399): Liboobs-CRITICAL **: There was an unknown error
communicating with the backends: The name
org.freedesktop.SystemToolsBackends was not provided by any .service
files

(network-admin:23399): Liboobs-CRITICAL **: There was an unknown error
communicating with the backends: The name
org.freedesktop.SystemToolsBackends was not provided by any .service
files

Does this thread help?

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-286260.html

Specifically the message by ChrisNiemy?

It did help =) for a little while.
Then it went back to the way it was before.
Seems that the dbus system doesn't work the way it should.
More precisely the avahi-daemon won't start and work like it should.
When i do a strace it complains about the /etc/ld.so.nohwcap file.
Any clue on this ?

Correction. Doesn't have anything to do with avahi-daemon not starting.
It's due to "perl /usr/share/system-tools-backends-2.0/scripts/SystemToolsBackends.pl" shutting down after i've run network-admin or when i try to run user-admin.
upon accessing network/services-admin it closes itself after i've closed these applications.
but it closes itself before i've accessed user-admin and i can't get that to work at all.
Really strange indeed. I'm however not totally stranded by this =) since i use the console more than i use Xorg. But things should work anyway ;)

Any update on this issue ?
Thanks =)

I'm having the same problem. It works if I restart dbus.

I don't know if this helps, but I think I've figured out how I borked things to cause this problem on my system. I wanted to set up the Perl CPAN module to install things that are more recent than those available via apt, so I set things up to put new modules installed that way in /usr/local and then set PERL5LIB as an environment variable in bash_profile. I think told CPAN to uninstall conflicting modules, so some core modules got upgraded and put in /usr/local, removing the stock installation. When run from startup, the PERL5LIB environment isn't set, so /usr/share/system-tools-backends-2.0/scripts/SystemToolsBackends.pl isn't able to find some of the core modules it needs (in my case File::Temp), and so it crashes. Restarting dbus from the command line worked for me (see above) because my shell had the correct PERL5LIB and so inherited the right @INC path.

Ultimately, reinstalling perl-modules solved the problem. This may have broken my CPAN-installed modules, though.

Hope that adds some insight...

I'm having the same problem and judging by the forum: " Edgy: not allowed to access the system configuration"
a lot of other ubuntu users are having the same problem. I also have the feeling that this has being caused by a system upgrade.
I have tried many of the suggestions on the forum such as reinstalling all packages concerning dbus but nothing seems to help. I have not tried the last suggestion concerning perl as I don't understand it and don't wish to damage my system more than it already seems to be.
Does anyone have a solution for this problem which can be implemented by "ordinary" ubuntu users?

I am having the same problems with ``unexpected error'' messages appearing when attempting
to open administrative tools ever since I upgraded to Hardy. This on a Dell desktop that came with
the Feisty Fawn installed. Almost simultaneously I upgraded to Hardy on a (non-Dell) laptop with
the same upgrade history as the desktop. Well, the laptop doesn't have these error message problems!