kate error message

[cadvanlei]

hello there,

i tend to use text editors a lot and - now that I'm on Kubuntu 16.04 - I'd like to use Kate (or alternatives).

whenever I launch Kate, i get the following error message:

Kate - Kdialog
Configuration file "/home/xxxx/config/katerc" not available.
Please contact your system administrator.

if i ignore the message and don't click on "OK" everything on the desktop is stuck.

if I click on "OK" Kate starts all right....

At "User Manager" I'm the administrator - if that's related, I temporarily disabled KDE Wallet because of the million password requests it issues.

any idea? thanks.

[whatthefunk]

Does it say "/home/xxxx/config/katerc" or "/home/xxxx/.config/katerc"? That dot is important. If you open a terminal up (or Dolphin) go to /home/xxxx/.config/ and check to see if there is a katerc file in there.

[cadvanlei]

you're right, for some reason I couldn't go through clipboard and I dropped the dot: it says "/home/xxxx/.config/katerc".

anyway, this is what I found

~$ ls -al /home/xxxx/.config/
-rw------- 1 root root 294 Jun 3 11:25 katerc

if the solution is to delete katerc can you please tell me how - have no idea and for some reason I couldn't find this katerc file through Dolphin (root>/home/xxxx//.config): search goes on forever and no result appears.

[whatthefunk]

Well theres your problem. That folder is owned by root so you cant edit it. Just a sanity check...are the other folders in .config owned by you or by root? Everything in there should be owned by you. If its not, you have much bigger problems.

Kate should regenerate the config file if it doesnt exist, so deleting it is probably going to solve your issue. To remove it

sudo rm /home/xxxx/.config/katerc

[cadvanlei]

i'd assume everything is owned by me...it's a private laptop and i'm the only user...
anyway, I deleted katerc and now Kate works all right.
many thanks for your help!

[whatthefunk]

I meant that the file was owned by root, not by your user account.

-rw------- 1 root root 294 Jun 3 11:25 katerc

The two 'root' entries here mean that the owner and the group of the file are both root, meaning that your user didnt own them. This is why you had the problem you did.

[GreyGeek]

Glad you resolved your Kate problem. Whatthefunk pointed out the if Kate's rc file was owned by root, which is not normal, then perhaps you have other files in your home account which are owned by root as well and that WILL lead to problems with other apps. Do you get "permission denied" message while running your installation?

BTW, most people are unaware of the real power and capabilities of Kate.

[acheron]

Most likely you ran kate or another gui app that accessed or created that file, under root or with sudo in an inappropriate way.

[whatthefunk]

GreyGeek: Kate is powerful and I like it as a general editor, but it sadly lacks plugins which make it inconvenient for many things. I use Sublime Text 3 as my main editor.

[cadvanlei]

GreyGeek: no, I never got a "permission denied" message so far (well, have run Kubuntu for the past three days, so it might happen).

Whatthefunk and GreyGeek: could you expand a bit on me owning/not owning everything (as opposed to root owning stuff)? for instance:

- how can i make sure I own everything, so that I avoid similar troubles (for instance, if I did a fresh install of Kubuntu 16.04, which I'd gladly do if that helps.

thanks!

[elijathegold]

By default you will own everything in your home directory. You can see this by running ls -al in various directories; You should should see your user name twice against each item. For example:

drwxrwxr-x 2 elijathegold elijathegold 4096 Jun  4 13:20 .
drwxrwxr-x 4 elijathegold elijathegold 4096 May 30 17:18 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 elijathegold elijathegold  186 May 31 16:17 lab1.py
-rw-rw-r-- 1 elijathegold elijathegold  344 Jun  3 16:48 lab2.py
-rw-rw-r-- 1 elijathegold elijathegold  526 Jun  4 13:20 lab3.py
-rw-rw-r-- 1 elijathegold elijathegold  123 Jun  4 13:20 .lab3.py.kate-swp

If you are editing a configuration file outside of your home directory, you need root privileges. You gain these with either sudo or kdesudo depending whether you are working in a terminal or GUI. Running kdesudo kate when a katerc file doesn't exist may create it as root, however it should create that in the root user's home.

Outside of your home directory, you should not be the owner of anything, excepting in /tmp, /mnt and /media/yourusername.

[GreyGeek]

No need to reinstall 16.04.
When you install an app from the repository the executable (an ELF binary as opposed to a Win exe) is stored in one of the bin directories owned by root but the "resource config" (rc) file is stored in the user's home account. That way each user (if there is more than one user on your system) can configure the GUI for that app to suite themselves. Although the app is owned by root the world is given execute (but not write) permission. That's how you can run it from your home account without being root. IF you do run the app for the first time from your home account using sudo it will create an rc file as root. Ergo your problem.

IF you download an app from some place other than the repository it may install regularly or it may install completely in your home account, including the binary. Running that binary with your permissions will not give the binary root permission BUT alien apps might have exploits to escalate to root permissions. Be VERY choosy about giving the root password to an alien app you've downloaded from non-repository sources. If in doubt ask around at this forum for advice.

[cadvanlei]

wow. thanx tons for the explanation. I'll need to think about what you said but i've got the feeling it's all getting a bit clearer

[GreyGeek]

Permissions is part of the security granularity that sets Windows apart from Linux (Unix type) installations. It is also why it is much harder to infect a Linux installation. A brief tutorial on permissions is here.

[jlittle]

(No one has chimed in with the standard spiel here, so I will.)

Likely, what you did to cause this trouble was to run kate with sudo. Running GUI apps with plain sudo causes this kind of problem, so don't; use kdesudo instead.

This advice has had to be repeated so often on this forum that for a while one of the mods (or administrators or frequent posters maybe) had it in his or her signature in red and bold and caps, possibly even flashing, so don't feel bad about it.