[SOLVED] Weird root permission issue on Sway which is not present in i3
Hello fellow lemmings
I am a long-time i3 user and have decided to switch to Sway.
I have encountered a weird error which has left me utterly bamboozled.
I am using Ubuntu 24.04 which has gone from 20.04 -> 22.04 -> 24.04.
It has Ubuntu-Gnome, i3 and Sway currently installed.
The issue
The error that I'm facing is when I'm using Sway, I simply don't have sudo access.
This is what the error looks like
$ sudo visudo
[sudo] password for xavier666:
Sorry, user xavier666 is not allowed to execute '/usr/sbin/visudo' as root on <HOSTNAME>.
When I switch back to i3, my permissions are fine for the same user.
I have not done any crazy modifications to the sudoer's file as far as I can remember.
PS: I have added a command to no-sudo xavier666 ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/brightnessctl
The "fix"
I temporarily solved it by adding xavier666 ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL to the sudoer's file.
IMO, I think this should not be required.
I don't remember ever adding the default user to the file for all the installations that I have done.
(But this is the first time I've installed Sway)
Logs/Outputs
Running sudo -l without the fix (on Sway)
Matching Defaults entries for xavier666 on <HOSTNAME>:
env_reset, mail_badpass,
secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin\:/snap/bin,
use_pty
User xavier666 may run the following commands on <HOSTNAME>:
(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/brightnessctl
When I run the same command on i3, i get this (ALL : ALL) ALL extra line in the output.
And when I run sudo -l with my fix on Sway, (ALL : ALL) ALL is present and the permission issue is fixed.
What is causing Sway to remove the root permission for the user?
Note: I'm just asking for the standard sudo behaviour. I'm not trying to run GUI applications as root.
Edit:
The issue was caused by swhkd.
It was installed as a setuid binary (as instructed by the developer of the project).
Once I switched back to sway's default keybinds and disabled swhkd, the permissions were back to normal.
I removed my previous "fix" in the sudoers list and I still have sudo access.
Thanks a lot everyone and specially @gnuhaut@lemmy.ml for pointing me in the right direction.
but with the way the sway session is started, as opposed to the i3 session. We need more info on this.
I'm using gdm to start sway. I'm using the laptop's built-in fingerprint scanner to unlock (Not sure if it matters). I saved the fingerprint in the Gnome session long back.
gdm probably looks inside /usr/share/wayland-sessions and finds sway.desktop and uses it to launch Sway.
I've tried to keep things as vanilla as possible.
Isn’t i3 Xorg only, and sway wayland only?
Correct.
Maybe wayland is launched using restrictive set of permissions.
One big difference is that sway doesn't run as a login process (and neither does gdm), meaning none of your .profile files are getting sourced. Check how your environment variables differ between i3 and sway and see if that might be the issue.
Yeah, it just calls the executable mentioned in the .desktop file (/usr/bin/sway).
It should not be a GDM, issue, right?
I also checked that I don't have seatd installed, which is a "minimal user, seat and session management daemon" mentioned in arch wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Sway). Could it be related?
Sorry, I have to go now. More tonight, if you want.
No hurry, the fix I am using is not causing issue.
I just want to know why this is happening.
This is a fun research problem.
PS: I checked Google and I didn't find anyone who has faced the same issue.
This goes a little beyond me because I have no idea how gdm would differentiate Xorg or wayland sessions.
Look into the session files themselves (.desktop) - they have an Exec= line.
Then see if that's maybe just a shell wrapper around something else, e.g.: file /usr/bin/sway and see what it does.