3

This is not the same question as: "Manage external tools" not popping up dialog where the dialog box doesn't pop-up after selecting Manage External Tools from the gedit Tools menu.

My problem is the Manage External Tools option doesn't appear in the Tools menu at all.

I've checked off to use the plug-in within the Preferences sub-menu:

gedit external tools.png

I've even quit and reloaded gedit after enabling the plug-in.

My current version is:

$ gedit --version
gedit - Version 3.18.3

Does anyone know why the Manage External Tools option isn't appearing?

Results of namei:

$ namei -l ~/.config/gedit/tools
f: /home/rick/.config/gedit/tools
drwxr-xr-x root root /
drwxr-xr-x root root home
drwxr-xr-x rick rick rick
drwx------ rick rick .config
drwxr-xr-x root root gedit
                     tools - No such file or directory

Based on steeldriver's comment I ran:

sudo chown -cR rick:rick /home/rick

and all is well now.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
  • 105,762

1 Answers1

4

This can happen if gedit is unable to write to its configuration directory, perhaps because of a directory ownership or permission issue. You can check using namei e.g.

namei -l ~/.config/gedit/tools
f: /home/steeldriver/.config/gedit/tools
drwxr-xr-x root        root        /
drwxr-xr-x root        root        home
drwxr-xr-x steeldriver steeldriver steeldriver
drwx------ steeldriver steeldriver .config
drwxr-xr-x steeldriver steeldriver gedit
drwxrwxr-x steeldriver steeldriver tools

Files and directories below ~ should be owned by you, not root - the latter is usually a sign of having used sudo to run the application previously: see Why should users never use normal sudo to start graphical applications? Find and fix any such issues using chown and/or chmod as appropriate, as advised in root owns some files in /home/user should I be concerned?

steeldriver
  • 142,475