[Users] Theme installation - couldn't create directory ?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 13:00:17 +0200, Manfred Schmitt wrote:
>Ralf Mardorf via Users wrote:
>
>> 
>>  "Untar the package.
>>  Start Claws Mail.
>>  Go to /Configuration/Preferences.../Display/Themes
>>  Click the 'Install new' button and locate the theme directory.
>>  Click 'OK'"
>>   
>There is no OK button but a requester "Should the theme be installed
>for all users?" (atleast in Claws 3.17.3).

Hi Manfred,

I made a test right now. Now I see the problem. Actually there are
several windows, the one with the file chooser, where the user needs to
click "open", then the "all users yes/no" window and finally the
"Preferences" windows with the "Apply/Cancel/OK" buttons. Actually
after pushing "No", the "Cancel" button is ineffective, the theme is
already applied. However, I suspect the instruction does refer to this
"OK" button.

>Choosing no works as expected here, the untarred theme was copied to 
>"~/.claws-mail/themes".

You don't need to move it, if it is e.g. extracted in the ~/Desktop
folder, Claws does automatically copy it to ~/.claws-mail/themes/ after
clicking "No".

>But choosing yes results (obviously) in the permission denied error.
>So I would asume Peter always tries to install the theme for all users.
>On which constellation this should work?

Indeed, I get the same error message. It should work, if permissions of
the folder /usr/share/claws-mail/themes/ aren't "drwxr-xr-x root root",
but something else. There are several other possibilities for the
permissions, such as a group "claws" with write access or write access
for "other". There's still no need to run Claws itself with root
privileges to make the "Yes" button usable.

>I hope no one runs claws as a super user and it seems to me (without
>digging into the source) there is no logic to escalate the rights to 
>"root" via su, sudo or however this must be implemented in other OS?

See above, it all depends on the permissions for the folder
/usr/share/claws-mail/themes/.

Tested with an outdate version of Claws, the operating system is Linux:

$ pacman -Q claws-mail-gtk3-git 
claws-mail-gtk3-git 3.99.0.r0.gce219a1a5-2

It might be a little bit different for older or newer releases.
However, it's not a bug, it depends on the file system permissions for
this particular directory. A superuser might grant herself write access
via a group "claws" or "claws-themes" for her non-root account, but
doesn't add other users to this group.

Regards,
Ralf