I was experimenting. This might be helpful (https://lemm.ee/post/62662283/20097388)

I found something interesting, thanks to my friend

• I removed the fix mentioned above. Now user does not have sudo access inside sway
• I ran the command exec su - xavier666. It asked for my user password and the command was accepted.
• My groups output looks normal (xavier666 is now part of sudo) and my permissions are fine
• However, the problem reappears after a reboot

It is as if this user is an imposter with incorrect privileges 📮

I did it. The issue still lingers. Check my last comment for output.

Great suggestion. I tried this method just now.

Unfortunately, I’m still getting the same bug.

The main difference between the two sessions is the output of the groups command

In pure tty

$ groups
xavier666 adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin lxd sambashare

The moment I enter into sway from inside the tty

$ groups 
xavier666 root

!lemmysilver

The output of the above command is nearly the same for me.

Even though I have manually added myself to /etc/sudoers file, my groups output is very weird. It’s just xavier666 root

Kind of stumped here.

user-IDs (prefixed with ‘#’)

And I thought it just meant a comment.

Thanks for this, I had no idea.

For i3, the desktop file is like this (present in /usr/share/xsessions)

[Desktop Entry]
Name=i3
Comment=improved dynamic tiling window manager
Exec=i3
TryExec=i3
Type=Application
X-LightDM-DesktopName=i3
DesktopNames=i3
Keywords=tiling;wm;windowmanager;window;manager;

And sway (present in /usr/share/wayland-sessions)

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Sway
Comment=An i3-compatible Wayland compositor
Exec=/usr/bin/sway
Type=Application
DesktopNames=sway

Gdm probably sums up all the DE from both the wayland and x11 sessions.

There are some files & directories in /etc/gdm3 but I’m too lazy to go through all of them

Init       PostSession  Prime     config-error-dialog.sh  greeter.dconf-defaults
PostLogin  PreSession   PrimeOff  custom.conf             Xsession

Thanks for your help.

It takes 7+ years to bring a new factory online. more to get all the kinks worked out and at full production

Not to take away from your point but they also have to

• make sure product is at par with the previous alternative in terms of quality
• make sure your supply chain is willing to shift to your new product
• have a healthy supply of workers OR
• have good automation in their production line (automation supply should also be sourced from within the country)

Once you have created this factory (which needs to be subsidized by the government in order to compete with the foreign product), we then apply targeted tariffs so that people can slowly shift to the homegrown product. Doing all this can takes decades of careful planning.

Tariff is not an ON/OFF switch which Trump thinks

Check how your environment variables differ between i3 and sway and see if that might be the issue

Just running set for each session and then diff should be enough, right?

Just the way I launch sway; via gdm.

As what user are you executing all these ‘groups’ commands?

I’m using my default user (xavier666)

The “normal” user should not be in the root group, and root should not be in the normal user’s group.

I just made the user a root user/system administrator during the Ubuntu installation process, which is very standard.

Have you done other things beside the “fix” you mentioned?

AFAIK, I haven’t done any changes. This is a single user system. I checked the contents of /etc/sudoers and these are the only other lines of significance. I didn’t change them (Why are there % signs?)

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
xavier666    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

That “fix” from your op, btw, looks totally valid to me.

It’s working fine also. However, I believe in “don’t touch what ain’t broke” and “why isn’t it documented?”

However, in my installations I have never touched the sudoer file to make the ONLY user part of sudo group post install. Either I’m dumb or I’m launching sway/wayland with improper permissions.

I also can’t find anything on the arch wiki which deals with this.

Why isn’t the same problem happening on i3?

Yeah, I ran it and rebooted it. But no change :(

I’ll do it once more just in case.

I’m unsure how to use the command. I added it to the main Sway config file, which means it’s executed whenever Sway starts (Post login).

However, it didn’t make any difference. I also ran it manually

$ loginctl enable-linger xavier666
$ sudo visudo
[sudo] password for xavier666:
Sorry, user xavier666 is not allowed to execute '/usr/sbin/visudo' as root on <HOSTNAME>.

My lazy hack

If it looks stupid but works, then it’s not stupid

these are all text files

Yeah, it just calls the executable mentioned in the .desktop file (/usr/bin/sway). It should not be a GDM, issue, right?

I also checked that I don’t have seatd installed, which is a “minimal user, seat and session management daemon” mentioned in arch wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Sway). Could it be related?

Sorry, I have to go now. More tonight, if you want.

No hurry, the fix I am using is not causing issue. I just want to know why this is happening. This is a fun research problem.

PS: I checked Google and I didn’t find anyone who has faced the same issue.

Inisde i3 WITHOUT FIX

$ groups

xavier666 adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin lxd sambashare

$ groups xavier666

xavier666 : xavier666 adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin lxd sambashare

Inside sway WITH/WITHOUT FIX

$ groups

xavier666 root

$ groups xavier666

xavier666 : xavier666 adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin lxd sambashare

PS: I corrected the username, it should be xavier666. I corrected the main post.

but with the way the sway session is started, as opposed to the i3 session. We need more info on this.

I’m using gdm to start sway. I’m using the laptop’s built-in fingerprint scanner to unlock (Not sure if it matters). I saved the fingerprint in the Gnome session long back.

gdm probably looks inside /usr/share/wayland-sessions and finds sway.desktop and uses it to launch Sway.

I’ve tried to keep things as vanilla as possible.

Isn’t i3 Xorg only, and sway wayland only?

Correct.

Maybe wayland is launched using restrictive set of permissions.

Just giving you an update. I gave it for repair and it got accepted for warranty. I kept my Ally like a baby so they couldn’t find any physical fault with it. They changed the motherboard for free and now the SD card reader is working again. However, I am not sure if the problem will recur again.

OP doesn’t need to hear this. OP’s a highly trained professional.