configuration file //.config/debconf-kde-helperrc not writable

Same here. And there is no such file.

Url site

https://bugs.launchpad.net/~kubuntu-ppa

I've run the command
sudo chown -R myuser.myuser /home/myuser/.kde/

let's see after some days if the error returns.

Doesn't help here. Any other ideas. Looks like something is messed up..

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Is someone following up on this? It is pretty annoying..

Still happening.

still happening to me.

First time it happened to me. Created text file "~/.config/debconf-kde-helperrc" Problem solved.

Will check if file exists on my home and report back.

Creating text file "~/.config/debconf-kde-helperrc" with rights -rw-rw-rw- does not help for me.

It helps for me:
Create file:
1) ~/.config$ touch debconf-kde-helperrc (if it doesn't exist)

Run :
 2) sudo chmod +w ~/.config/debconf-kde-helperrc

Thanks Victoria, created file today and set permissions, will report back if issue happens again.

Victoria, doesn't work. Still getting the message.

I remember that I was removing recommended packages recently and since then I'm seeing the problem, too.
I have the feeling that one of the recommended dependencies became a required one.

I've executed also apt autoclean and autoremove. It just prompts to uninstall orphan packages which you wanted to install someday.

The error message clearly states, that kde tries to write to a file in the root directory of the system and not in any home directories.

Let's track down where the $HOME variable substitution gets lost in between.
Attached we see an other flavor of this message with only one slash where a tilde or path to the home directory should be visible:
[1] kde-debconf-helperrc.jpeg

Creating the .config folder and file works fine (for me anyway). Think there may be some confusion as to the pathing - the .config folder SHOULD be /home/username/,config ----- but, it's NOT. The command //.config, at least in my case, is referring to a non-existent folder - specifically /.config (yes - off the root directory). Of course, the folder doesn't exist and even if it did, in it's location we wouldn't have access to it.

Simple to "fix", but a bit clumsy
terminal - sudo su or whatever you gotta do to get root
cd /
mkdir .config
cd .config
touch debconf-kde-helperrc
cd /
chown -hR username .config

Inelegant, but whatever, it works. I've avoided too much command line trickery as that's always a bit confusing for some folks (myself included - just getting back into linux after years away, gotta say it's AMAZING).

Anyway, be looking into the root cause of this issue as time allows, but until then, it's working without error and the file doesn't seem to get written to anyway (still 0 bytes)

Cheers

Hmmm, at a loss. Created 2 VMs, one as control but with a root access user, the other standard but using sudo - E to install kde.

Both gave the same error when attempting to install anything from the software manager (strangely, synaptic is never an issue).

Thought it was XDG_CONFIG_HOME as it wasn't set for some reason - set it - no change, although when queried (echo XDG_CONFIG_HOME) it shows correctly after being set.

When file is manually created at /.config/defconf-kde-helperrc and permissions are set, the error is gone (no need for logoff). I do notice that installations seem to "pause" now, although maybe that's just in my head. Seems resolved after setting owner and group the same (username for both).

Of note - issue doesn't occur until kde is started. Can install kde but as long as the plasma desktop isn't started, no error. Once the plasma desktop is used, will get error on any display manager.

Anyway - I'm done. Fixed with /.config/debconf-kde-helperrc file creation and permissions setting. I'm a rank amateur with this - think we are on the right track but it'll likely take someone else to find an elegant solution or heck...a patch for the program?

By replacing debconf-kde-helper with a shell script, I logged its environment, which contains only:

DEBCONF_DB_REPLACE=configdb
DEBCONF_DB_OVERRIDE=Pipe{infd:none outfd:none}
DISPLAY=:0
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=kde

This small environment is apparently set up by pk_client_create_helper_argv_envp() in packagekit. You can reproduce the error dialog by just running

 env -i DISPLAY=:0 /usr/bin/debconf-kde-helper

With strace you can see a lot of attempted access to //.config, //.local, etc. I collected a backtrace for the access to //.config/debconf-kde-helperrc. It comes from the KSharedConfig constructor. The error dialog is shown by KConfig::isConfigWritable().

The HOME environment variable is read by QFileSystemEngine::homePath(). There is no easy way for an application to prevent it from being read. So it seems like the simplest solution is to patch packagekit.

I submitted a pull request to PackageKit: https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/pull/609

Thanks for the pull request.