VSCode-linux-x64-stable.zip doesn't run as root

[ctaggart]

• VSCode Version:
  latest stable Linux 64: VSCode-linux-x64-stable.zip
  downloaded from:
  • https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/?dv=linux64
  • https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=620884
• OS Version:
  Ubuntu 14.04

Steps to Reproduce:

curl -o VSCode-linux-x64-stable.zip -L https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=620884
unzip -q VSCode-linux-x64-stable.zip
export PATH=$PWD/VSCode-linux-x64:$PATH
code --verbose

root@937050988adf:~# code --verbose
{ [Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/root/.config/Code/storage.json']
  errno: -2,
  code: 'ENOENT',
  syscall: 'open',
  path: '/root/.config/Code/storage.json' }
TypeError: Bad argument
    at TypeError (native)
    at ChildProcess.spawn (internal/child_process.js:274:26)
    at Object.exports.spawn (child_process.js:351:9)
    at /root/VSCode-linux-x64/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:6:6784
    at new __dirname.undefined.t.Class.derive._oncancel (/root/VSCode-linux-x64/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:5:6601)
    at Object.i [as getUserEnvironment] (/root/VSCode-linux-x64/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:6:6747)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/root/VSCode-linux-x64/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:9:10764)
    at e._invokeFactory (/root/VSCode-linux-x64/resources/app/out/vs/loader.js:4:13697)
    at e._complete (/root/VSCode-linux-x64/resources/app/out/vs/loader.js:4:14014)
    at e.resolveDependency (/root/VSCode-linux-x64/resources/app/out/vs/loader.js:4:15068)

[Tyriar]

@ctaggart haven't seen this before. I'm curious who owns files/folders, what the permissions are on them and whether they actually exist. Can you pass along the output of these commands?

whoami
ls -la ~ | grep .config
ls -la ~/.config | grep Code
ls -la ~/.config/Code

[ctaggart]

@Tyriar here is the output:

root@937050988adf:~# whoami
root
root@937050988adf:~# ls -la ~ | grep .config
drwx------  3 root root  4096 Apr 22 22:37 .config
root@937050988adf:~# ls -la ~/.config | grep Code
drwx------  3 root root 4096 Apr 22 22:51 Code
root@937050988adf:~# ls -la ~/.config/Code
total 16
drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Apr 22 22:51 .
drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Apr 22 22:37 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    2 Apr 22 22:58 DevTools Extensions
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 22 22:37 User

[Tyriar]

Weird, I would expect it to work provided the user has rw access to ~/.config. It might be an issue with Electron. The only things I can recommend are to try with a non-root user or installing via a package (though the latter probably won't make a difference).

[ctaggart]

It appears to be an issue when running as root. The GUI came up when I ran as a user.

[ctaggart]

@Tyriar In the April Iteration Plan I noticed:

Linux: Support running vscode with sudo permissions #3068 @Tyriar
Test #5062

I was hoping that this would allow me to launch VSCode as root. I downloaded the insiders build and tried launching it, but it doesn't launch and I don't get any output:

root@1f20642fd434:~# code-insiders --user-data-dir=/root/profile --version
1.1.0-insider
root@1f20642fd434:~# code-insiders --user-data-dir=/root/profile .        
root@1f20642fd434:~# pwd
/root

I noticed that a User subdirectory is created:

root@1f20642fd434:~# ls -al ./profile/User/
total 85
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  68 May  7 19:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 102 May  7 19:48 ..

Should it be possible to launch VSCode as root?

[ghost]

I am experiencing a similar issue, just the opposite...I can run:

• su root -> /opt/vsc/code
• sudo /opt/svc/code
• sudo -u non-root /opt/svc/code

but I cannot simply run from any user,

TypeError: Bad argument
    at TypeError (native)
    at ChildProcess.spawn (internal/child_process.js:278:26)
    at Object.exports.spawn (child_process.js:379:9)
    at /opt/visual-studio-code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:6:4539
    at new __dirname.undefined.t.Class.derive._oncancel (/opt/visual-studio-code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:5:9667)
    at Object.o [as getUnixUserEnvironment] (/opt/visual-studio-code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:6:4502)
    at I (/opt/visual-studio-code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:10:15570)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/opt/visual-studio-code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/electron-main/main.js:10:16109)
    at e._invokeFactory (/opt/visual-studio-code/resources/app/out/vs/loader.js:4:13697)
    at e._complete (/opt/visual-studio-code/resources/app/out/vs/loader.js:4:14014)

...but as I said, If I use sudo and specify a non-root user it works.

[Tyriar]

I'm curious on what you guys think the best way to handle this is. I spend most of my time in Ubuntu so running as root is not usually a thing I'm allowed to do (su is locked down on Ubuntu). The recent change was specifically targeting sudo only as previously it hung when launched.

Here's the current situation:

• The code bin command enforces a --user-data-dir when id -u is 0, see https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/resources/linux/bin/code.sh#L9 - This was done because when running as sudo, the current user data directory is stored within ~/.config which has restrictive permissions:

  ❯ ls -la ~ | grep .config
  drwx------  33 daimms daimms  4096 May 16 11:35 .config
  

  The need for this will go away post-Move user data to ~/.vscode[-variant]/user-data and automatically set root user data dir #5570 where the --user-data-dir is specified automatically as a sibling to the regular user's data dir.

• When running as root, do not attempt to open the welcome page. This is due to a bug in xdg-open, see ad7e861 (this may be fixed now [Linux] shell.openExternal can hang electron/electron#4916, created Investigate whether shell.openExternal still hangs under sudo #6594 to follow up).

• When in a sudo session of vscode, you can only open root-owned files. I'm sure you can get around this, I didn't invest enough time in this though since people should not be using sudo in general as it will mess up file perms which may be confusing to newer users.

It's a very bare-bones support situation at the moment, plus it focuses around running as sudo instead of root, which I don't think id -u differentiates between. So I believe the fixes I did may have made the situation worse when running as the root user instead of sudo on a non-root user.

Any input from the community would be greatly appreciated 😃

[ctaggart]

I created this issue originally when making some docker images with VSCode on it. My solution was simply to create a vscode user that has sudo access. I'm happy with that solution, so I'm going to close this issue.

https://github.com/ctaggart/dotnet-vscode/blob/master/root/install-user.sh

[Tyriar]

Going to reopen, I'd eventually like to get it working as expected for root user, sudo and regular users.

[Tyriar]

Closing since there are no plans to fix this any time soon and there is a workaround in #5679 (comment)