root:root ownership of ~/.local/share/mc

[/dev/rob0]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 05:55:04PM +0200, David Martín wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is to be considered as a bug or if it is

It definitely is not a bug, merely a user misunderstanding.

> just an «unfortunate coincidence». In case it's of any use I
> will report:
> 
> I am an active user of mc. After a fresh install of GNU/Linux 
> (mostly Ubuntu flavors) my first steps look like
> 
>   $> sudo apt install mc
>   $> sudo mc -or- sudo mcedit whatever.cfg
> 
> This leads to mc creating a config folder in the first-user home 
> directory owned by root. Later, when getting into everyday routines 
> I realise about it (no history, no clipboard-file-copies are 
> allowed to me) and I have to «sudo chown -R ...» to fix it.

You need to understand what sudo(1) does with the environment.  When 
invoked as you did, $HOME is not changed, so mc does as you describe,
as would any other user software which wants to create a config file 
or directory.

You might be interested in sudo's "-i" option.  But that too is a 
tradeoff; if you have set anything you like in your own 
~/.local/share/mc, it won't be applied, because mc would look for the 
one in /root.

In the future if you have a question that actually pertains to mc, 
please post to the users' list, "mc at gnome.org".  It's very low 
traffic, most of the time, so don't worry about that; go ahead and 
subscribe.
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