[filelight] [Bug 475781] New: Prompt the encountered permission problems after scanning with non-root user

[Xinhui Yang]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=475781

            Bug ID: 475781
           Summary: Prompt the encountered permission problems after
                    scanning with non-root user
    Classification: Applications
           Product: filelight
           Version: 22.08.3
          Platform: Other
                OS: Other
            Status: REPORTED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
          Assignee: unassigned-bugs at kde.org
          Reporter: cyan at cyano.uk
                CC: martin.sandsmark at kde.org
  Target Milestone: ---

Created attachment 162401
  --> https://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=162401&action=edit
filelight showing access deined messages in the terminal during a root
filesystem scan with normal user

SUMMARY

When running as the normal user, if we are scanning the entire root directory,
any permission problems are ignored and never shown to the user after
collecting usage information. The error message is only visible in the stdout
if running from a terminal.

Besides that, the result might be inaccurate if those directories contain any
files, which is always less than the actual usage.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Make a directory as root, with permission 0700 (makes it unreadable to other
users)
2. Put some large files in it (in order to make some difference between scans
with and without root)
2. Start filelight as the normal user
3. Start scan

OBSERVED RESULT

No error window is shown, and the scan is performed as the directories and
files that have insufficient permissions do not exist, thus generating an
inaccurate result.
If run in a terminal, permission errors are printed to stdout, as shown in the
attachment.

EXPECTED RESULT

There are two possible ways to improve this behavior:
1. Filelight shows a warning window, which contains the directories it can not
read, and tells the user that the result might be inaccurate.
2. Filelight prompts the user to run filelight as the superuser if such file or
directory is encountered.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: AOSC OS 11.0.1
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.103.0
Qt Version: 5.15.5

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Here are some examples of possible directories unreadable or unexecutable to
normal users, and may have significant disk space usage:
- Some directories in /var/log
- /var/lib/machines (systemd-nspawn(1) containers)
- /var/lib/docker
- /var/lib/libvirt

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