Authorization Problems, Unable to Access Controls

Thanks for your question

I am not sure if I understand your question fully.

In ubuntu you don't really login as administrator. Whenever you call an application that need that set of permission, it will use a wrapper called sudo (in gui application it is done implicitly through kdesu or gksu). You should get a password window popping up in which you enter your password. Are you saying this windows doesn't pop up anymore?

Thanks

Hello,

I just had a friend with a similar error as you. Actually the root of the problem was that his disk (in fact, one of his partitions) was full.
After freeing some disk space, he was able again to use system tools.

To verify if it is your case, you can use the graphical tool "Disk usage analyser" which you can find in the "Applications" under "Accessories".
In case you do not have it or that you are not sure how to understand its output, under the same menu/sub-menu you have the entry "Terminal". Launch it. The type in the following:
df -k
This command gives you disk space occupation for each partition, each line is a partition. If you see that one of the entries as 100% indicated, that where the partition is full. Just after this 100%, you will see a directory like /home or /. That the entry point under which you have to free some disk space.
If it is /home, try to empty your trash bin (waste basket) by emptying the deleted items.
If it is / or /var, you could try the following commands:
sudo apt-get clean
This command empty the cache that apt/synaptic are using when downloading the package file you are installing or updating. It does not arm nor does it make your system slower to empty it. On the contrary, it gives you lots of free space :-)

Then check again with 'df -k' or "Disk usage analyser" that you have some free space left. You can try again to launch "system" applications and see if you still have the problem. Hopefully it would be solved :-)

Cheers,

PS: /!\ Oops sorry, I just checked "Disk usage analyser" and it will not give you disk free space information, you have to use the "Terminal" :-( however, you can use "Disk usage analyser" to spot where (in which directory) the main amount of disk space is used. It will help you free some space.

Er. Chmoding the whole filesystem to 755 was a bad idea.

How did you do that? Did you recursively do the entire filesystem?

If you have chmodded your entire filesystem to 755, you might have to reinstall your entire system to get everything to work properly again (make sure you backup your /home/ directory)

Well, I'm not entirely new to Linux, so when I said "root" I meant "$ su" or using programs that need su access, and provide the password at runtime. But that pop-up asking for the password doesn't open, and I get "Unable to access Xauthorization file"

I have plenty of disk space on all partitions, so that can't be the issue.

For the CHMODing I did "$ chmod 755 /* "

Why would I have to reinstall everything? If the CHMOD caused the problem, isn't that reversible?

Thanks again

Just as a follow up, I saw that Fiesty came out. I tried to upgrade, thinking that might solve all my problems anyways...and I got the same Xauthorization error after it downloaded the install tool, and tried to run it.

Soory, but in Ubuntu the root user is disabled. I ubuntu there is the sudo (not su). The operation is the same, only you must put sudo before the program name.

As an example:

localhost@localdomain:~$ sudo nautilus

Nautilus starting with root privileges.

Thanks

Ok, well I've always used "su" and it works. So, that's not an issue.

I've managed to get the update manager running with root auth, and it's almost done downloading Fiesty. If it installs, I'm hoping all this goes away.

Do you think it will fix my problems?

--Kyle

Well, the "su" *is* one issue. If you set a root password then it can break some of the admin tools. This page explains it:-

http://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo

If you chmod en-masse a bunch of files it's only reversible if you know what the permissions were before, or if you can restore from a backup.

The upgrade is unlikely to fix any permission problems you have created by setting a root account and chmodding. However you only chmooded files in the / directory which probably has little no impact.