xdiagnose needs root privilege to create /etc/default/grub.bak

Agreed this is annoying from a usability standpoint. I'm thinking I should investigate policykit for this.

Suggest renaming the bug as xdiagnose appears to require root privileges for several things, and silently fails when launched from the default Ubuntu menus, doing nothing. Seems like it may be a simple fix to have it prompt for privileges on launch like a few other apps.

prepending gksu to the menu command would be trivial (and in fact is a relatively simple workaround) but I don't think it's the right way to fix this. PolicyKit provides finer grained administrative permissions and would allow xdiagnose to be started without permissions and only request authentication if an operation required it. Due to that and other reasons policykit would also be more secure than gksu. It's more work to implement it though.

I hoped to get a proper fix for Q but ran out of time. For Q will just do the gksudo trick, and will do a proper fix later as time permits.

This bug was fixed in the package xdiagnose - 3.1

---------------
xdiagnose (3.1) quantal; urgency=low

  * control: Move intel-gpu-tools to recommends to fix FTBS
  * Force Xorg.0.log encoding to bytes to work around UTF-8 issues
    (LP: #1041104)
  * Drop unused and undefined i18n calls
    (LP: #1046991)
  * Use gksudo to gain elevated permissions required by xdiagnose
    (LP: #769419)
 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:39:01 -0700

https://errors.ubuntu.com/bucket/?id=%2Fusr%2Fbin%2Fxdiagnose%3AIOError%3Amove%3Ahandle_enable_apport%3Amove%3Acopy2%3Acopyfile

This indicates people are still running into problems using xdiagnose on 12.10 due to not running it as root, so reopening task.

The verification of this Stable Release Update has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regresssions.

This bug was fixed in the package xdiagnose - 3.5.1

---------------
xdiagnose (3.5.1) raring-proposed; urgency=low

  * bin/xdiagnose: Exit with error if run as non-root. Otherwise, the
    program will crash when it tries to write a new grub configuration.
    (LP: #769419)
 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:15:03 -0700

Hello Fabio, or anyone else affected,

Accepted xdiagnose into precise-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdiagnose/2.5.3 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Hello Fabio, or anyone else affected,

Accepted xdiagnose into quantal-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdiagnose/3.2.4 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

njin@njin-VirtualBox:~$ xdiagnose
Error: Must run as superuser
njin@njin-VirtualBox:~$ apt-cache policy xdiagnose
xdiagnose:
  Installed: 2.5.3
  Candidate: 2.5.3

njin@njin-VirtualBox:~$ xdiagnose
Error: Must run as superuser
njin@njin-VirtualBox:~$ apt-cache policy xdiagnose
xdiagnose:
  Installed: 3.2.4
  Candidate: 3.2.4

This bug was fixed in the package xdiagnose - 2.5.3

---------------
xdiagnose (2.5.3) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * bin/xdiagnose: Exit with error if run as non-root. Otherwise, the
    program will crash when it tries to write a new grub configuration.
    (LP: #769419)
 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:13:13 -0700

This bug was fixed in the package xdiagnose - 3.2.4

---------------
xdiagnose (3.2.4) quantal-proposed; urgency=low

  * bin/xdiagnose: Exit with error if run as non-root. Otherwise, the
    program will crash when it tries to write a new grub configuration.
    (LP: #769419)
 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:42:40 -0700