VSCodium can't save file if it needs root privileges (Linux Flatpak)

If I open a text file that needs root privileges to modify, I get this error:

 undefined

    
Failed to save 'this_file': Insufficient permissions. Select 'Retry as Sudo' to retry as superuser.

That's fine, that's expected.

But when I click on "Retry as Sudo", I get this error:

 undefined

    
Failed to save 'this_file': Unable to find pkexec or kdesudo.

This happens though pkexec is installed on my machine, at /usr/bin/pkexec; and I granted VSCodium access to it through Flatseal. How do I fix this?

7 comments

Try and open codei as root
sude flatpak run some.thing.codium
- sude
  minor typo spotted
  
  lol yeah
  You are going to want to run something like flatpak list to see what flatpak calls the app. It will be a com.something.codium or similar.
  Then you can open the file by running it as sudo flatpak run flat.pak.app and then find your file. You should be able to edit and save.
  It is a bit involved, but usually people will do this via cli text editor and just say sudo editor file.txt. We need the extra steps here due to gui app.

I think you need a polkit authentication agent installed and running to prompt you for your password.
Alternatively you can sudo codium path/to/file (assuming you have aliased codium to use your flatpak)

I kept fixing and then kept having new problems with vscdoium in flatpak, either have to give it all permission or give up maybe. As I was using it there would be new problems every once in a while, and different extensions introduced new issues too lol
I gave up and just installed it through AUR.
Even though it's vscodium and not vscode you can run it with firejail --net=none /sbin/vscodium and it won't have access to the internet

7 comments