Lobster not working on Linux - permission denied

[Voralberg]

Describe the bug

After installing lobster using the Linux (from source) commands whenever trying to execute lobster in the shell I get the error:

/usr/local/bin/lobster: 197: cannot create /tmp/lobster.log: Permission denied

And then stops. I'm not even running it in debug mode, I also tried to set debug=0 in the configuration file to no avail. My tmp directory is drwxrwxrwt and it allows to access and create files without problem without sudo.
Lobster works if executed with sudo though. This is not the first time that I've encountered this issue, usually installing it again solved it but now I'm not having much luck. How to solve permanently this problem?

In any case, thank you for this incredibly handy software and for the attention.

Desktop:

• OS: Debian 12

[justchokingaround]

not the first time I've encountered people talking about this problem, I'll check what could cause, but I'm not sure yet atm

[pirate486743186]

i'm getting

Error parsing option watch-later-dir (option not found)
Setting commandline option --watch-later-dir=/tmp/lobster/watchlater failed.
Exiting... (Fatal error)

Debian 12 too. Have you tested without a config file?

[justchokingaround]

mpv version?

[pirate486743186]

mpv 0.35.1 Copyright © 2000-2023 mpv/MPlayer/mplayer2 projects
 built on UNKNOWN
FFmpeg library versions:
   libavutil       57.28.100
   libavcodec      59.37.100
   libavformat     59.27.100
   libswscale      6.7.100
   libavfilter     8.44.100
   libswresample   4.7.100
FFmpeg version: 5.1.6-0+deb12u1

[justchokingaround]

can u try building version 0.37 and above from source pls? i have Debian 12 on my laptop with the latest mpv and lobster works just fine

[pirate486743186]

i'll pass, i'm not an ARCH user for a reason.

[pirate486743186]

my version had --watch-later-directory not --watch-later-dir
at 571 i used --watch-later-directory
that seamed to work, then it gave me
/usr/bin/lobster: 542: arithmetic expression: division by zero: "position * 100 / total_duration"
so the formatting is different.

[pirate486743186]

@Voralberg
Try using the makedeb method. This will build a package and probably eliminate your error, what ever that is.

[Voralberg]

@pirate486743186

i'm getting

Error parsing option watch-later-dir (option not found)
Setting commandline option --watch-later-dir=/tmp/lobster/watchlater failed.
Exiting... (Fatal error)

Debian 12 too. Have you tested without a config file?

I also had this problem when first installing lobster on Debian 12, fortunately it got solved once I updated mpv to a more recent version. Now I'm using the version on Fruit's APT repository as was one listed in the installation page of mpv website. Now here's the version I'm running:

mpv 0.38.0 Copyright © 2000-2024 mpv/MPlayer/mplayer2 projects
 built on Apr 19 2024 11:13:52
libplacebo version: v6.338.2
FFmpeg version: 7.0
FFmpeg library versions:
   libavutil       59.8.100
   libavcodec      61.3.100
   libavformat     61.1.100
   libswscale      8.1.100
   libavfilter     10.1.100
   libswresample   5.1.100

Sorry I forgot to mention it earlier.

@justchokingaround

not the first time I've encountered people talking about this problem, I'll check what could cause, but I'm not sure yet atm

Not sure if it's connected but I moved lobster to ~/.local/bin/ and run the update script and today works again like a charm. Next time I'll encounter this problem, is there anything that I could do to provide something useful to help understand what's the source of it? The debug mode of lobster doesn't seems to work when stuck with this problem so I was wandering if there was there another cli program that I could use to debug it, any suggestion?

In any case, thank you again for this marvelous program!

[justchokingaround]

uh u could try running it with sh -x $(command -v lobster) but I'm not sure it'll work

[Ruuku420]

UPDATE: /tmp/lobster.log becomes owned by root if you run it with sudo. I did sudo rm /tmp/lobster.log and it fixed it.

Hey! I have the same problem as Voralberg had with the /usr/local/bin/lobster: 197: cannot create /tmp/lobster.log: Permission denied even after a complete manual reinstall of the program.

I am currently running Void Linux on Linux 6.6.41_1.
/tmp is also drwxrwxrwt

ruuku% sh -x $(command -v lobster)
+ LOBSTER_VERSION=4.3.2
+ config_file=/home/ruuku/.config/lobster/lobster_config.sh
+ lobster_editor=nvim
+ tmp_dir=/tmp/lobster
+ mkdir -p /tmp/lobster
+ lobster_socket=/tmp/lobster.sock
+ lobster_logfile=/tmp/lobster.log
+ applications=/home/ruuku/.local/share/applications/lobster
+ images_cache_dir=/tmp/lobster/lobster-images
+ command -v notify-send
+ notify=true
+ command -v hxunent
+ hxunent=tee /dev/null
+ presence_client_id=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
+ discord_ipc=/discord-ipc-0
+ handshook=/tmp/lobster/handshook
+ ipclog=/tmp/lobster/ipclog
+ presence=/tmp/lobster/presence
+ small_image=https://www.pngarts.com/files/9/Juvenile-American-Lobster-PNG-Transparent-Image.png
+ separator=:
+ path_thing=\
+ sed=sed
+ ueberzugpp_tmp_dir=/tmp
+ uname -s
+ + printfgrep %s  -qE \-\-edit|\-e

+ trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
/usr/local/bin/lobster: 197: cannot create /tmp/lobster.log: Permission denied
+ cleanup
+ [  != true ]
+ rm -rf /tmp/lobster
+ [  = true ]
+ [  = true ]
+ set +x

Extrace also brings this too

10213 /usr/bin/env sh /usr/local/bin/lobster
    10213 sh /usr/local/bin/lobster
extrace: process vanished before notification: pid 10214
      10215 uname -s
      10217 grep -qE '\-\-edit|\-e'
      10218 rm -rf /tmp/lobster

This program only broke in the last few months, I have had no problems with it in the past few years though. Hope this helps!

[justchokingaround]

ah good to know, ty. I have an idea of how to fix it but not a lot of free time atm, so I'll do it when I have time, but if someone is willing to make a PR I can help out