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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0017659ScribusInternalpublic2025-10-19 17:12
Reporterjayaddison Assigned Tojghali  
PrioritynormalSeverityblockReproducibilityalways
Status closedResolutionno change required 
PlatformLinuxOSDebianOS Versionforky / testing
Product Version1.6.4 
Summary0017659: Privacy: Scribus attempts to read systemd machine-id file via dbus
DescriptionBy default, systemd, as found in the Debian (forky/testing) GNU/Linux operating system I'm using, creates a randomised hex identifier for the current host at boot when it does not already exist, and writes this into a file at the path: /etc/machine-id

That's fine, although I consider the default permissions on that file unnecessarily broad, so I use chmod to remove all group-and-other user permissions, and to retain only read-only access by root:

> # chmod 'u=r,go-rwx' /etc/machine-id
> # ls -l /etc/machine-id
> -r-------- 1 root root 33 Jul 19 22:50 /etc/machine-id

This does mean that I have a customised host environment -- and I recognise that software cannot always account for all quirks of user system configuration, especially if those customisations break essential services/components of the system.

Attempting to run Scribus with this configuration fails with a dbus error:

> $ scribus boot-guide.sla
> dbus[50244]: D-Bus library appears to be incorrectly set up: see the manual page for dbus-uuidgen to correct this issue. (Failed to open "/var/lib/dbus/machine-id": Permission denied; Failed to open "/etc/machine-id": Permission denied)
> D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace
> Aborted scribus boot-guide.sla

If reading the file is not essential for Scribus, I would like to figure out whether it can be patched to run without open permissions on the machine-id file.
Steps To Reproduce- Use an operating system such as Debian with systemd and dbus present
- Remove Unix group-and-other permissions from the file: /etc/machine-id
- Attempt to run Scribus
Additional InformationI believe that the error occurs in this part of the dbus source code: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus/-/blob/dbus-1.16.2/dbus/dbus-sysdeps-unix.c#L4454-4464
Tagsdbus, privacy, systemd
PatchNo

Activities

jghali

2025-10-19 16:11

administrator   ~0053083

Scribus does not depend directly on dbus nor use it directly. So no patching is possible on our side. DBus is however used by Qt and other system components.

jayaddison

2025-10-19 16:53

reporter   ~0053084

Thank you, jghali. Following the information from your note, I believe I've tracked the behaviour to the QT ibus input module. For the record (I'll re-close this bug in a moment) I am able to workaround the issue by temporarily disabling that input module using the QT_IM_MODULE environment variable. For example:

> $ QT_IM_MODULE=simple scribus

Thanks again for the pointer.

jayaddison

2025-10-19 16:59

reporter   ~0053085

Apologies, but I do not seem to have the ability/permission to close this bug myself from the Mantis web interface. I believe it can be closed.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2025-10-19 13:31 jayaddison New Issue
2025-10-19 13:31 jayaddison Tag Attached: dbus
2025-10-19 13:31 jayaddison Tag Attached: privacy
2025-10-19 13:31 jayaddison Tag Attached: systemd
2025-10-19 16:11 jghali Note Added: 0053083
2025-10-19 16:12 jghali Assigned To => jghali
2025-10-19 16:12 jghali Status new => resolved
2025-10-19 16:12 jghali Resolution open => no change required
2025-10-19 16:14 jghali Status resolved => closed
2025-10-19 16:53 jayaddison Status closed => feedback
2025-10-19 16:53 jayaddison Resolution no change required => reopened
2025-10-19 16:53 jayaddison Note Added: 0053084
2025-10-19 16:59 jayaddison Note Added: 0053085
2025-10-19 16:59 jayaddison Status feedback => assigned
2025-10-19 17:12 ale Status assigned => closed
2025-10-19 17:12 jghali Status closed => resolved
2025-10-19 17:12 jghali Resolution reopened => no change required
2025-10-19 17:12 jghali Status resolved => closed