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Evasive comments

On this question the OP is evading answering if he's using Ubuntu or not. The question's comments illustrate this:

  • You should include the "#some gksudo related output" because on my system there are no error messages. What version of Ubuntu are you using? : WinEunuuchs2Unix

  • The warnings are related to the gtk theme, however, is not really important what the errors are as I just want to hide the output, not fix the warnings : angrykoala

  • I get warnings related to gtk theme all the time when running gedit which I suppress programmatically so I totally understand your annoyance at them. My point is there are no errors with whoami on my system which makes me concerned about your system. I tried gksudo, gksu and pkexec all of them have no errors. : WinEunuuchs2Unix

  • whoami is just an example as well, it could be any other command, which I want to get the output, including errors : angrykoala

  • I understand. I'm just trying to duplicate the problem on my side. Are you using Ubuntu? In the mean time look at: askubuntu.com/questions/896935/… and: askubuntu.com/questions/505594/… as possible duplicates. : WinEunuuchs2Unix

  • This is for a script, so I would rather get a programmatic solution to avoid the output on any system. Instead of whoami, any command that send stderr would be valid to recreate the problem : angrykoala

Background

OP claims this happens on his system:

$ gksudo whoami
> #some gksudo related output
> root

But on my Ubuntu 16.04 with a brand new terminal no such messages:

rick@dell:~$ gksudo whoami
root

rick@dell:~$ gksu whoami
root

rick@dell:~$ pkexec whoami
root

So either he isn't on Ubuntu 16.04, or my version of terminal is corrupted or he isn't using Ubuntu at all. Which makes helping him difficult in this case as the problem isn't reproducible.

Can others confirm there are no warnings on Ubuntu?

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  • 3
    IDK what to tell you, no warnings here? OP did refuse to give more information but this is the Internet and people are stubborn and strange, perhaps the OP simply sees no benefit in giving the information? IMO if the OP won't add required info, it does not matter if they are using Ubuntu or not, close as unclear instead.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:20
  • gksu/gksudo are deprecated and should not be used any longer anyway, because you should not run any GUI stuff as root at all. If he wants to launch some CLI commands in a script and wants a GUI popup asking for the password just for not needing to have a terminal open, that could also easily be crafted e.g. with Zenity, which comes preinstalled. gksu does not.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:26
  • @MarkKirby Thanks for confirming there is nothing wrong with my system and whoami doesn't issue GTK warnings. Which I already knew as it's not a gtk based program. It leaves me scratching my head what kind of system he is running. A GTK based terminal or something????
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:32
  • I guess that there might be some errors/warnings generated by gksudo's popup window, which could be GTK based... But I have no idea. No messages for me here either. Or he's simply using a different command and not admitting it.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:34
  • @ByteCommander I heard gksu was being deprecated which is why I started switching scripts over to pkexec a few months ago. But the OP's question was about gksudo and I'm trying to figure out if the reason mine is different than his is because he's not on Ubuntu. Which makes it impossible to help him.
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:37
  • @ByteCommander Thanks for confirming there are no gtk+ warning messages coming from gksudo whoami. That's three of us now so I think we can confirm he's not on Ubuntu???
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:40
  • 3
    No, now you just know he's not using a well working Ubuntu with default configurations. I still see the possibility that he might have played around with some system GTK stuff or themes or whatever that cause the warnings he claims to get. He's making it hard or impossible to answer his question without further exact information though. I'd probably leave a comment that he must include said information or you can not help him and will abandon the post.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:44
  • @ByteCommander Looking at his history he's started out in Stack Overflow (574 points) and just popped into Ubuntu to ask this first question (100 associated points + 1 real point here). I'm of half a mind just to ignore the guy all together because he's not forthright. I don't mind helping people on other platforms and often counsel them to take out another distro reference if the question is universal and helps Ubuntu users too. The links I gave him talk about &1>2 (or whatever) and other techniques for suppressing messages. I just have a bad feeling about this whole issue...
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 23:52
  • If OP is using a theme different than the default, that's what you should seek. If they are not using Ubuntu, then VTC.
    – Andrea Lazzarotto
    Commented Aug 8, 2017 at 20:10
  • @AndreaLazzarotto I asked twice if they were using Ubuntu and never got an answer. Anyway I've "walked away" from this meta question. It's not productive.
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Commented Aug 9, 2017 at 0:37

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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OK, first of all, we're not detectives nor should we try to be. When someone asks a question here, we provide an answer for Ubuntu. If the OP isn't actually using Ubuntu and our answer doesn't work for them for that reason, then that's the OP's problem. The question has been answered for Ubuntu so the next Ubuntu user will find it helpful. Whether or not the OP does is completely irrelevant.

Also, quite frankly, I don't understand why in the world you would come and post this sort of thing so publicly like this. If you feel that the OP isn't being straight with you and that bothers you so much, just walk away. What could a discussion here prove? We can't know if the OP is using Ubuntu any more than you can and, more importantly, it isn't really such a big deal. We answer for Ubuntu, that's all we really care about. As I said before, if you're not on Ubuntu, yet you ask here and get an answer that only works for Ubuntu, that's your problem.

Now, I admit I see no reason why you think the OP isn't using Ubuntu. The fact that you have no errors on your system doesn't mean that the OP doesn't. Maybe they have a misconfigured gtk theme, for instance. That you see no error messages when running a command does not mean that nobody sees error messages. Especially things about gtk warnings which are what the OP mentioned. Such warnings are very common and neither their presence nor their absence implies anything whatsoever about what system someone is running. And while whoami isn't a gtk program, gksudo is, so it's not surprising if there are such messages.

So, in conclusion, you're really, really overthinking this. Just answer for Ubuntu. Or don't answer and walk away. It's really not worth making such a big deal out of this.

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    100% this. It's trivially easy to make Gnome pump out gallons of error and warning messages if you poke around with its theme. The comments on this question are really unnecessarily suspicious about the OS. It makes absolutely no difference to the answer.
    – Oli Mod
    Commented Aug 1, 2017 at 10:40

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