If you are looking to mess with what your flatpaks can do, Flatseal it is really nice for managing permissions, for your flatpaks.
It may not be what you are looking for, but though I would drop it in just in case.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Problem is that it wouldn’t launch for them. Fedora has an RPM for it, but I don’t think Ubuntu does.
True, but I was suggesting Flatseal, more for once the issue was resolved.
Try “flatpak override —user —reset” and “flatpak override —system —reset”.
Didn't work sadly, still nothings launches and still gives me the same error in the command line.
man 1 flatpak-override
Overrides the application specified runtime requirements. This can be used to grant a sandboxed application more or less resources than it requested.
By default the application gets access to the resources it requested when it is started. But the user can override it on a particular instance by specifying extra arguments to flatpak run, or every time by using flatpak override.
The application overrides are saved in text files residing in $XDG_DATA_HOME/flatpak/overrides in user mode.
Scroll down, you will see the --reset option to remove the overrides.
I noticed you used sudo to run the command, so I think the override files are stored in /var/lib/flatpak/overrides/. To get everything back to normal, try deleting everything inside that directory.
If you want to override the system-wide settings, you can create files in the same format as the ones in /var/lib/flatpak/overrides/, but put them in /home/your_username/.local/share/flatpak/overrides/.
To generate the pre-config settings for a flatpak, you can use the flatpak -m info app_id command. This will show you some info about the flatpak, and the -m option will print out the metadata. You can also save this info to a file by running flatpak -m info app_id > ~/.local/share/flatpak/overrides/app_id.
When you edit the file, pay attention to the Context, System Bus Policy, and Session Bus Policy sections and delete everything else. By default, flatpak is set to share some resources, but you can deny access by adding an exclamation mark before the resource, for example, you could change shared=network to shared=!network.
If you're looking for a user-friendly way to manage flatpak permissions, I recommend checking out flatseal. It's a great GUI tool that can make it easier for you in this case.
That being said, it's always a good idea to be cautious when using commands posted online. Make sure you understand what you're doing before copying and pasting anything into your terminal. And if you're ever unsure about something, there are some great resources available to help you out.
One of the best places to start is the Arch wiki, and I think, man is a friend everybody needs!
That's definitely handy, gonna bookmark that stuff somewhere for later on, thx! Though I'm not the best with technical stuff or big ol' manuals, and right now I sorta don't have the time or energy to sift through all of it, just wanna fix this issue real quick if possible so I can continue with my day.
I did check the var lib override folder, nothings there strangely, no hidden files or anything even, completely blank. Scrolled down with the man 1 command in the terminal, also nothings there, what am I looking out for here? Are the overrides gone? Is this a different issues now or? Said something about X server missing when running an app through the terminal, what do I do about that?
I do have flatseal and do use it, but it's a flatpak so I can't launch it right now.
It's likely because it can't access X11 or Wayland. To fix this, try editing the files in /home/your_username/.local/share/flatpak/overrides/ like I mentioned earlier. Specifically, look for the sockets line and make sure it includes wayland, x11, and x11-fallback like sockets=wayland;x11;x11-fallback;. This should help you launch flatpaks that need X11 access.
Alright I took a look, and all I see are text files of only a few of the apps, nothing else is present as far as I'm seeing right now, and in them there's only a single command of text, all of them are different. Is that normal?
Yes, they are different because they are for different flatpak applications.
What's in the files? Do they have a line called sockets? Is that line set to x11 or x11-fallback? Have you tried adding those options like sockets=wayland;x11;x11-fallback? I usually get an error saying I can't connect to the display or that X is missing when I revoke access to x11 or wayland. Or did you remove x11 from your system?
Like I said there's literally nothing in the text files but a single line of text, each application only has one and it's different for each. Some have filesystems=host-etc;host-os, some have something else, and again there's only a few applications here, not everything, and the selection is also very random, some of these are applications I haven't used in a while, really weird.
Tried that yeah, didn't do anything at all. X11 is definitely installed, I checked, and all the flatpaks only ran in x11 mode before all of this regardless of what settings I changed through flatseal or command line, so no idea what's going on then. Did I bork flatpak somehow?
EDIT: okay I think I'm just gonna use timeshift, get everything working-ish again, back up whatever I can over a few days, and either install a whole new distro or install a new version of Kubuntu and not tweak anything anymore, I think the things really screwed up after that broken install ordeal, no idea what's going on.
Do you know if it's possible to install a new version of Kubuntu via a live USB without wiping everything, including important data, out? If not, what's the second best option? Can I drag and drop some folders to perserve my applications and their data and stuff? Is there a tool for all of that? Let me know! Would be appreciated!