Obsidian .AppImage not work in Kubuntu 24.04

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1

What I’m trying to do

Execute .AppImage

Things I have tried

Give permissions to the file

It seems like an electron and sandbox problem. The message that the terminal gives is:

[9483:0427/092723.959907:FATAL:setuid_sandbox_host.cc(158)] The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly. Rather than run without sandboxing I’m aborting now. You need to make sure that /tmp/.mount_Obsidi8XJZAB/chrome-sandbox is owned by root and has mode 4755.
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)

And with sudo:

[0427/092559.731276:FATAL:electron_main_delegate.cc(294)] Running as root without --no-sandbox is not supported. See https://crbug.com/638180.
Trace/breakpoint trap

2

I decided to install the .deb package. It runs smoothly.

3

You need to install the fuse2 package to run appimages. Fuse3 is already installed but its ok to install the older one along side it.

1 Like
4

Unfortunately, on Kubuntu 24.04 you cannot install libfuse2 as libfuse2t64 is installed in its place. If you try to install libfuse2, even using ‘force’ the apt program will tell you that it is selecting libfuse2t64 and that it is already installed and up to date. So this solution doesn’t work - unless you know of some other way to install fuse2…

sudo apt -f install libfuse2
[sudo] password for redacteduser: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'libfuse2t64' instead of 'libfuse2'
libfuse2t64 is already the newest version (2.9.9-8.1build1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
5

I did find another workaround - but I cannot find any concrete information discussing the possible security concerns of using this workaround - so use at your own risk.

For me, running obsidian with the --no-sandbox command line argument resolved the issue. (I had problems with the Flatpak version of Obsidian in the past, and I’m not a big fan of Snap, so for now, I’m using this solution)

./Obsidan-1.5.12.appimage --no-sandbox

It also fixed 8 of the other 11 appImage programs I have installed, several of which, have no Snap or Flatpak version.

6

The --no-sandbox solution IMHO is a dirty way, but it does work. The libfuse2t64 is installed, but it did not job. The fix might be in the properly configuring the sandbox. I did not find any solution that worked. Defining mounting options for tmpfs did not resolve the problem. I am looking for solution. I would try no to use --no-sandbox in the Exec field of .desktop file.

7

Could you try moving the file to /opt/Obsidian/obsidian ?

I tested following steps on AppImage package in version 1.6.3 from GitHub and after doing following steps I was able to run it (on Kubuntu 24.04 LTS).

Added nosuid to mount options for tmpfs in /etc/fstab:

❯ mount | grep tmpfs | grep '/tmp'
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noatime,nodiratime,inode64)

Make sure you have enabled kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone.

sudo sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1
chmod u+x Obsidian-1.6.3.AppImage
sudo mkdir  /opt/Obsidian
sudo mv Obsidian-1.6.3.AppImage /opt/Obsidian/obsidian

Run the app:

/opt/Obsidian/obsidian

The reason why it works is the default AppArmor profile /etc/apparmor.d/obsidian, that enables userns for obsidian (new security confinement restrictions in Ubuntu), but it works only if the application is installed under specific path.

2 Likes
8

Works for me!

9

My Obsidian couldn’t either start after upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 with the same error as OP.

The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly.

I do not have a mount to /tmp, but moving the appimage to /tmp worked:

$ sudo mkdir /opt/Obsidian
$ sudo chown $USER:$USER /opt/Obsidian
$ mv ~/.local/bin/obsidian /opt/Obsidian/obsidian
10

I have Obsidian placed under the path /opt/Obsidian/obsidian but it doesn’t work.