Getting Vikunja Desktop to work on Ubuntu

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1

I’ve tried to install Vikunja Desktop on Ubuntu 24.04. I first tried installing the .deb (Vikunja Desktop-v0.24.6.deb, but I could not get that to work. I ran sudo chmod 4755 /opt/Vikunja\ Desktop/chrome-sandbox because that is often necessary for electron apps, but if I try to run vikunja-desktop in the terminal I get the following error:

LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
/opt/Vikunja
[22969:0414/095622.046493:FATAL:zygote_host_impl_linux.cc(202)] Check failed: . : Invalid argument (22)
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)

Now since the actual folder in /opt is 'Vikunja Desktop' with a space, and the error lists only /opt/Vikunja I wonder if something is going on with that space.

Next I tried to use the AppImage ('Vikunja Desktop-v0.24.6.AppImage'). That one gives the sandbox error:

[23123:0414/095909.661135: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_VikunjEwejgz/chrome-sandbox is owned by root and has mode 4755.
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)

I tried to solve it by making a policy in apparmor (/etc/apparmor.d/vikunja):

# This profile allows everything and only exists to give the
# application a name instead of having the label "unconfined"

abi <abi/4.0>,
include <tunables/global>

profile vikunja-desktop '/home/myuser/bin/Vikunja Destop-v0.24.6.AppImage' flags=(unconfined) {
  userns,

  # Site-specific additions and overrides. See local/README for details.
  include if exists <local/vikunja-desktop>

I also removed the space in the name of the AppImage, to see if that made a difference, but both ways it still gave the same error.

Does anyone know how to get vikunja desktop to work on Ubuntu?

2

I have now also tried the zip version, and this is really really weird. After extracting the zip in the downloads folder I tried to run the exe:

~/Downloads$ ./Vikunja\ Desktop-v0.24.6/vikunja-desktop
[22724:0415/094835.154554: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 /home/myuser/Downloads/Vikunja Desktop-v0.24.6/chrome-sandbox is owned by root and has mode 4755.
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)

After this I changed the owner and the permissions (the order is important):

sudo chown root:root /home/rzeiler/Downloads/Vikunja\ Desktop-v0.24.6/chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 ./Vikunja\ Desktop-v0.24.6/chrome-sandbox

I now get the same error as when installing the deb package, pointing to a different folder:

/home/myuser/Downloads/Vikunja
[23776:0415/100415.219509:FATAL:zygote_host_impl_linux.cc(202)] Check failed: . : Invalid argument (22)
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)

Again it doesn’t point to the whole folder, just the part before the space. The only thing I can think of is if the developers remove the space in the folder and see if that works.

3

I just thought of the fact that I can of course remove the space in the zip version. I did that and now I got a different error:

A JavaScript error occurred in the main process
Uncaught Exception:
Error: Cannot find module 'body-parser'
Require stack:
- /home/myuser/Downloads/Vikunja_Desktop-v0.24.6/resources/app.asar/node_modules/express/lib/express.js
- /home/myuser/Downloads/Vikunja_Desktop-v0.24.6/resources/app.asar/node_modules/express/index.js
- /home/myuser/Downloads/Vikunja_Desktop-v0.24.6/resources/app.asar/main.js
- 
    at Module._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1055:15)
    at s._resolveFilename (node:electron/js2c/browser_init:2:115690)
    at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:908:27)
    at c._load (node:electron/js2c/node_init:2:13672)
    at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1122:19)
    at require (node:internal/modules/helpers:130:18)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/myuser/Downloads/Vikunja_Desktop-v0.24.6/resources/app.asar/node_modules/express/lib/express.js:15:18)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1256:14)
    at Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1311:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1098:32)

It’s possible that’s not the whole error, but I couldn’t figure out how to scroll it if it isn’t.

4

This seems like a known bug - does it work if you try with an unstable build?

5

I tried the unstable build, and now I get the same error as in this thread: The state of the windows Desktop app - #3 by Echo51

I do also get an empty app window, which is more than I got before.

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