I had a heavy Tumbleweed update (300+) and since then, I cannot launch applications from the menu anymore:
if I press the menu shortcut key and type the first letters to narrow down to any app, then press Enter, I briefly see the bouncing icon as before, but the application is not launched
if I navigate in the menu with the mouse, same outcome
if I use the KRunner (Alt-F2), I can launch applications from there
After some research and tests, I found out that “xhost +” was a (bad) work-around. From the moment I disable access control to the screen, the menu works again.
Does it mean that now, applications are launched differently, with an impact on the access control?
Any idea if something is wrong, and how to solve the problem cleanly (other than adding “xhost +” to any startup script)?
Thanks,
– Redglyph
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20200917
KDE Plasma Version: 5.19.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.73.0
Qt Version: 5.15.1
Kernel Version: 5.8.7-1-default
OS Type: 64-bit
The specific app you’re trying to run may have something to do with your problem.
Years ago,
xhost + was recognized to be a serious security problem and attempts were made to patch it then and several times since but the warning has always been the same… this method to launch apps is risky and will always be subject to modifications over time as it continues to be patched when vulnerabilities are found.
It’s any app, the problem is the same for all of them, be that system or user, installed initially or later.
All of them fail to launch, and all of them launch after an “xhost +”.
I know the “xhost +” is risky, that’s why I wrote it’s a bad work-around and would like to fix the problem more cleanly
I haven’t changed my configuration and it was fine before, but perhaps something went missing or relied on something that disappeared.
After the update, for instance, “man” was not there anymore, I had to uninstall / reinstall it. Perhaps I should look for the update log to see any suspicious message.
Run any program that does not start in terminal and post full command line and any output/error message.
After the update, for instance, “man” was not there anymore
This is well known problem. TW 20200917 (that you are using according to your original post) contains fix for this issue so it is entirely unrelated to the issue you are describing here.
Not sure what happened, I had rebooted after the update and the problem appeared then.
One reboot later, and it’s gone. Perhaps there were post-kernel-update pending actions that left the configuration in a bad state?
