fix(starlark): stop the root display service locking the web UI out

Reported after a fresh install: installing an app from the Starlark tab
failed with "install failed: Failed to install from repository", and so did
uploading a .star file and installing from a GitHub directory. The reporter
found the cause only by reading service logs, and fixed it with

    sudo chown -R ledpi:ledpi /home/ledpi/LEDMatrix/starlark-apps

starlark-apps is gitignored, so it is never checked out -- it is created
lazily by whichever process reaches it first. Those processes run as
different users. systemd/ledmatrix.service is User=root and constructs this
plugin at startup, which is where _get_apps_directory() is called from;
systemd/ledmatrix-web.service runs as the login user and is what actually
installs apps.

The documented first step is to install pixlet and reboot, so on a fresh
machine the display service usually wins that race and mkdir() leaves the
directory root-owned. The web process then fails in _install_star_file() on
app_dir.mkdir(), which catches nothing, so PermissionError reaches the
route's outer `except Exception` and becomes the generic message the user
saw. All three install paths write to the same directory, which is why all
three failed.

The web user cannot repair this -- chown needs root. So root does it, on
every startup, which also heals machines already broken by this without the
owner having to find the chown themselves. It is a no-op when not root, when
the platform has no POSIX ownership, and when the checkout genuinely belongs
to root; a chown that fails warns rather than killing startup.

Also made the failure legible if the handover is ever prevented: a
PermissionError now names the directory, the automatic repair, and the
manual chown, instead of a message that names neither path nor cause.

Verified by mutation: dropping the handover call, chowning a genuinely
root-owned checkout, and letting a non-root process chown each fail their
own test. 121 starlark tests pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014RRtqXDCnvnY6EQwhT5CV9
This commit is contained in:
ChuckBuilds
2026-09-21 16:15:24 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 967f3a0567
commit 965d509864
3 changed files with 355 additions and 2 deletions
+36 -1
View File
@@ -26,6 +26,36 @@ import web_interface.blueprints.api_v3 as _pkg
# package is the only patch point that covers every caller.
def _ownership_hint(err: BaseException):
"""An actionable message when the apps directory is not writable.
The display service runs as root and the web interface as the login user
(see systemd/ledmatrix.service and systemd/ledmatrix-web.service). The
starlark-apps directory is not in the repository, so whichever service
reaches it first creates it -- and when that is the display service, the
web user cannot write into it and every install fails.
The plugin now hands the directory back on startup, so this should not be
reachable. It is kept because the failure is otherwise invisible: the
generic message names no path and no cause, and the one user who hit it
had to read the service logs to find it. If the handover is ever prevented
-- an exotic mount, a directory root-owned for another reason -- this says
what to do instead of costing somebody an evening.
Returns None when `err` is not a permission problem.
"""
if not isinstance(err, PermissionError):
return None
return (
f"Cannot write to {_STARLARK_APPS_DIR}. It is owned by another user "
f"-- usually because the display service, which runs as root, created "
f"it before the web interface did. Restarting the display service "
f"(sudo systemctl restart ledmatrix) repairs the ownership "
f"automatically. To fix it by hand: "
f"sudo chown -R $USER:$USER {_STARLARK_APPS_DIR}"
)
@api_v3.route('/starlark/status', methods=['GET'])
def get_starlark_status():
"""Get Starlark plugin status and Pixlet availability."""
@@ -278,7 +308,8 @@ def upload_starlark_app():
# without it, though, and describe_exception redacts credentials and
# truncates -- the same trade-off every other handler here makes.
logger.exception("[Starlark] File error uploading starlark app: %s", err)
return jsonify({'status': 'error', 'message': 'File error during upload',
return jsonify({'status': 'error',
'message': _ownership_hint(err) or 'File error during upload',
'details': describe_exception(err)}), 500
except ImportError as err:
logger.exception("[Starlark] Module load error uploading starlark app: %s", err)
@@ -702,6 +733,10 @@ def install_from_tronbyte_repository():
except Exception as e:
logger.exception("[Starlark] install_from_tronbyte_repository failed")
hint = _ownership_hint(e)
if hint:
return jsonify({'status': 'error', 'message': hint,
'details': describe_exception(e)}), 500
return jsonify({'status': 'error', 'message': 'Failed to install from repository', 'details': describe_exception(e)}), 500
@api_v3.route('/starlark/repository/categories', methods=['GET'])
def get_tronbyte_categories():