[Solved} lxappearance freezes as root

[apprentice]

hi all

nice place you got here
been lurking and liking for a long time

decided MX-15 was getting a little... something
never was fond of xfce anyway, lxde either for that matter
but watt has grown on me
besides there´s openbox underneath right

k, enough blah,blah

any way i try to open lxappearance as root to change spacefm´s fugly root appearance the machine freezes
except the mouse, he can run around all day
only thing that works is hard reset

ive tried sudo, gksudo, gksu
using a root term to call lxappearance
i even did the polkit pkexec yes,yes,yes thing

but alas, no joy

now i know sudo-lxappearance worked for me in MX-15
but i don´t remember doing anything to make it so

is there a difference in the way debian and ubuntu handle this?

i will be happy to provide any info you need

cheers

[billwho]

32 or 64-bit system?

Does using this work?
Menu > Preferences > Customize Look and Feel

and from terminal this works:
lxappearance

Both work on this 32-bit machine.

--but--

sudo -s
lxappearance

This causes a hang, need to hard reset.
Lubuntu 16.04.1 also hangs
WattOS R9 also hangs

Debian LXDE testing (stretch) gives this message but does open lxappearance

** (lxappearance:2019): WARNING **: lxappearance.c:67: Failed to connect to the session message bus: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

--THEN--

ssh login to WattOS R10 after causing it to hang with sudo lxappearance
+ it is still alive
+ top as pid
PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
3271 tech      20   0    8068   3556   3024 R   0.2  0.2   0:00.12 top
3269 root      20   0    6528   1688   1488 S   0.0  0.1   0:00.00 dbus-launch
3268 root      20   0   23820   8988   8188 S   0.0  0.4   0:00.01 lxappearance
3256 root      20   0    6716   4344   3156 S   0.0  0.2   0:00.04 bash

It does look like it is waiting for dbus

from ssh this works:
sudo reboot

[apprentice]

thanks billwho

32 or 64-bit system?

Does using this work?
Menu > Preferences > Customize Look and Feel

and from terminal this works:
lxappearance

Both work on this 32-bit machine.

64 bit and both work

--but--

sudo -s
lxappearance

This causes a hang, need to hard reset.
Lubuntu 16.04.1 also hangs
WattOS R9 also hangs

Debian LXDE testing (stretch) gives this message but does open lxappearance

my debian sid linuxbbq sudo lxappearance works as expected

and i´m sorry but i don´t understand below
does this mean i need to look at dbus?
a quick google gives me some dbus-sudo issues

** (lxappearance:2019): WARNING **: lxappearance.c:67: Failed to connect to the session message bus: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

--THEN--

ssh login to WattOS R10 after causing it to hang with sudo lxappearance
+ it is still alive
+ top as pid
PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
3271 tech      20   0    8068   3556   3024 R   0.2  0.2   0:00.12 top
3269 root      20   0    6528   1688   1488 S   0.0  0.1   0:00.00 dbus-launch
3268 root      20   0   23820   8988   8188 S   0.0  0.4   0:00.01 lxappearance
3256 root      20   0    6716   4344   3156 S   0.0  0.2   0:00.04 bash

It does look like it is waiting for dbus

from ssh this works:
sudo reboot

cheers

[billwho]

I found a bug report for using sudo with GUI apps:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus-glib/+bug/71248>

I tried the workaround suggested and it worked:
sudo dbus-launch lxappearance
but it returns an error message.

gksudo dbus-launch lxappearance
works and has NO error message

And I have seen this comment:
The problem is that root has neither an Xscreen session, nor a dbus connection.
Different distros deal with this differently...

Why do you need sudo with lxappearance?
I see no difference than using:
Menu > Preferences > Customize Look and Feel

[apprentice]

thanks again bilwho

i had just found the dbus-launch trick on the manjaro forum after you pointed me in the right direction
although it took you a lot less time

for me both calls work - no error messages

Different distros deal with this differently...

definately
MX-15 is debian stable xfce
linuxbbq is debian sid openbox
and they both work straight up

which leads to this

Why do you need sudo with lxappearance?
I see no difference than using:
Menu > Preferences > Customize Look and Feel

i make my root adie different so i know thats where i am
and even though it tells me right there, root@ i still make roxterm different
just in case
in root spacefm there´s an ugly red you cant see through
so i change it...

except that now i can get there
1 root lxappearance is not changing the root spacefm looks
2 root lxappearance is changing my user spacefm looks

this ones solved

off i go down the hole

cheers