"Failed Loading Skin" sudo/root works, other users don't - Arch linux

[herochao]

So on Tuesday, my spotify stopped working, starting up with the message "Failed Loading Skin".

This problem seems to have many causes, but no solution I found worked for me.

System: Arch Linux 64bit

Kernel: 3.16.4/3.17.1 (both don't work)

DE: gnome-shell 3.14 (worked with spotify before tuesday), mutter, pulseaudio 5.0

Steps i tried:

reinstalling spotify, including deleting ~/.cache, .config and .local spotify folders and /usr/share/spotify/ : doesn't work

deleting any gnome/gtk3/gtk2 settings and trying different  theme/icon sets : doesn't work

trying the programm with another user who is not root : doesn't work

extracting the zip files of spotify.../Data/resources.zip into the same folder: doesn't work

starting spotify with sudo : works perfectly at all time during my changes

the most relateable thing i found was that there was a qtwebkit update on monday, now qtwebkit has version 2.3.4

the log when starting spotify in terminal is the same as with many other users:

Spoiler

/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify: /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0: no version information available (required by /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify)
/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify: /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0: no version information available (required by /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify)
10:43:48.996 I [breakpad.cpp:107                ] Registered Breakpad for product: spotify

10:43:48.996 I [translate.cpp:139               ] Reloading language file
10:43:48.996 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) failed
10:43:48.996 E [translate.cpp:116               ] Spotify resources and binary are out-of-sync. This should never happen.

because of the program working perfectly fine with sudo, i don't think that it's a theme error (tried setting everything to default with the normal user), missing file or compatiblity error,and as other non-root users don't work either, i don't think it's somthing with my personal config,

but rather some permission that normal users are missing... tried finding that with strace and xtrace, but nothing was found

thank you for your time, i hope someone can help me 🙂

[jesperol]

Clearing QT_PLUGIN_PATH is a workaround that makes spotify start for me. The other suggestions like changing Qt theme or clearing DESKTOP_SESSION and GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID did not work (I'm on KDE).

QT_PLUGIN_PATH="" spotify

[superichy]

---

@samjaved wrote:

It doesn't run without sudo because you don't have the ownership to the index.dat file.

Change the owner of the file using terminal and all should run fine. Here's a little tutorial if you are not aware how to do this:

1. Open terminal
2. Run "sudo -s"
3. Enter password
4. Run "cd /.cache/spotify/Storage/"
5. Run "chown [Linux account username] index.dat"

Use your account username in step 5. You now own the file. Run Spotify and it will work.

---

THIS INSTRUCTIONS WORKED PERFECT FOR ME, THANK YOU VERY MUCH SAM

[BBoy]

I had exactly the same problem.

But I think this is a simple bug.

When you run the strace on the spotify binary you can see that spotify find resource.zip in wrong place, in my case:

access("/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotifyyb/Data/resources.zip", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

The solution simply was that I've copied the whole Data directory from

/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/Data

to the above shown

/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotifyyb/

As I see in previous posts there is some similar log with strace, but with different location?! Maybe depending on the username?!

EDIT:

Meanwhile I do some research and yes, this wrong directory link related to the username:

Exactly by this way:

/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify{AB}/

Where the {AB} is the last two character of the current username!

After this, everything works fine with normal uer too!!!

[sevecek]

Hello,

I just came accross this very same error. Running as a super-user didn't solve it. Curiously, it didn't ran under awesome but ran just fine under xfce. In the end, I just extracted /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip into /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/ and it works now. So maybe it helps someone.

[QkiZ_Mx · Accepted solution]

I have similiar problem with skin.xml file. Running from root and unsetting

GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID
DESKTOP_SESSION

doesn't work. After some strace invistigate I was delete /etc/ld.so.cache

sudo rm /etc/ld.so.cache

and generate it again with ldconfig.

sudo ldconfig

Now I can run Spotify 😄