[Solved] Synaptic W: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '/root/.synaptic/tmp//tmp_cl' couldn't be...

[tony37]

The fix was for apt (and actually dates from 2016), not synaptic. It's no doubt irritating to get these messages, but they are completely harmless.

[BitterTruth]

I thought it was for both in the end?(see screenshot3 - 16th No 2020) because people were getting really confused with apt, aptitude, synaptic and _apt user and reporting it in the same bug report so i think the devs solved a few issues relating to it.

[tony37]

2020-11-16 is just when the last Synaptic release was, nothing to do with the bug.

[BitterTruth]

2020-11-16 is just when the last Synaptic release was, nothing to do with the bug.

Very interesting tony. Did we get that synaptic update because I can't see it in my history?

I see mx-packageinstaller-pkglist on the 16th and mx-packageinstaller on 20th:

Commit Log for Mon Nov 16 10:07:31 2020
Upgraded the following packages:
lo-main-helper (20.11.04) to 20.11.05
mx-packageinstaller-pkglist (20.11.04) to 20.11.05

Commit Log for Fri Nov 20 09:15:48 2020
Upgraded the following packages:
mx-packageinstaller (20.11.01) to 20.11.02

Are they related?

Also, I understand what you mean about being able to just ignore the warnings since they're somewhat 'cosmetic' but like I said before this is my daily driver. I use it about 10-12 hours a day so really need it to be glitch free. Anyway since the issue started only a few days ago, I really want to know what changed.
Thanks for the help anyway

[tony37]

Did we get that synaptic update because I can't see it in my history?

No, that update was for the Debian Sid package.

Maybe a solution to the problem (inspired by message #84 on that bug tracker) is to change ownership of /root/.synaptic/tmp to _apt:root, so:

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sudo chown -R _apt:root /root/.synaptic/tmp

I'm not sure this is a fully professional solution, but I tried installing a package with Synaptic after changing permissions and it worked fine.
_apt:root is the same ownership as /var/cache/apt/archives/partial and /var/lib/apt/lists/partial have, so I'm not just inventing something

[BitterTruth]

I'll give that a try the next time it shows up.

It's really wierd. I just opened synaptic, did 'reload' followed by 'mark all upgrades'...... no message.

_apt:root is the same ownership as /var/cache/apt/archives/partial and /var/lib/apt/lists/partial have

yeah. I looked into it a bit. i read that you can delete stuff under archives and lists directories since the system will refresh the data once you do apt update so I deleted everything under /var/cache/apt/archive directory using plain old clean command:

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# apt-get clean

(never knew this command did this)

I also deleted everything under var/lib/apt/lists/ to be sure. I was hoping to reset permissions/ownership to default in case they got changed along the way.

You have to do an apt update afterwards otherwise you get errors:

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sudo apt-get update

Unfortunately this didn't fix things as the warning was still there. I might just raise a bug of my own with debian.

Incidentally, do you think updating from the mx updater/command line is better/safer over using synaptic? I only recently changed to using synaptic for updates because of the history log it keeps. I'm thinking I should go back to using the apt-notifier (or MX updater as it's called now). It was way faster and I never had any issues.
Does mx updater also use _apt user and reduced privileges or does it execute as 'root'?

[tony37]

Incidentally, do you think updating from the mx updater/command line is better/safer over using synaptic? I only recently changed to using synaptic for updates because of the history log it keeps. I'm thinking I should go back to using the apt-notifier (or MX updater as it's called now). It was way faster and I never had any issues.
Does mx updater also use _apt user and reduced privileges or does it execute as 'root'?

If you just use Synaptic for the history log: the MX updater also has a history log and it's more comprehensive than the Synaptic one, just right-click on the Updater icon and then 'History'. Or you can use

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apt-history

in a terminal.
The mx-updater (and MX Package Installer) uses apt, which (sometimes) uses the _apt user, but that doesn't cause the bug, it's just that _apt doesn't have access to /root/.synaptic/tmp (which is only a problem in Synaptic of course). But I think it's just wrong programming that the _apt user should have anything to do in /root/.synaptic (see also comment #18 on the bug tracker).

[BitterTruth]

I agree with you. I don't know what caused synaptic to suddenly start behaving like that but at least we have a few solutions now and thankfully, the message hasn't appeared all day either (maybe deleting the files did fix the permissions and the system just needed a reboot?)

For now, I've switched back to mx updater and I'll change the ownership of /root/.synaptic/tmp if the message pops up again,so I'll mark it solved.

Thanks for sticking with me tony

[tony37]

(maybe deleting the files did fix the permissions and the system just needed a reboot?)

I don't think so, just the bug being unpredictable in showing up