Firejail stopped working after latest updates

Ask Fedora
1

Hello everyone,
After most recent updates this week, firejail has stopped working completely.

$ firejail nano
Error fcopy: invalid ownership for file /etc/localtime
Error: failed to run /run/firejail/lib/fcopy, exiting...
Error: proc 132248 cannot sync with peer: unexpected EOF
Peer 132249 unexpectedly exited with status 1

/etc/localtime seem to have correct permissions:

$ ll /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 35 Apr 18 05:41 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London

It can be fixed by adding ignore parameter:
firejail --ignore=private-etc nano

Can I report this as a bug somewhere? Is it Fedora only? Is it upstream firejail problem?
Please check if you have this problem too. Thanks.

$ uname -a && lsb_release -a
Linux fedora 6.15.9-201.fc42.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat Aug  2 11:37:34 UTC 2025 x86_64 GNU/Linux
LSB Version:    n/a
Distributor ID: Fedora
Description:    Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition)
Release:        42
Codename:       n/a
2

That error suggest that you need to use sudo to run firejail.
I’m not a firejail user, so you should check it’s documentation.

3

I’ve been firejail user for a long time. Always use it with browsers, mail program, and similar. Always using it under normal user, not root. Not sure if this is upstream decision, or something changed in Fedora, that firejail no longer works in default settings, but require special parameter just to work with normal programs.

5 
$ namei -l -Z /etc/localtime
f: /etc/localtime
dr-xr-xr-x root    root    system_u:object_r:root_t:s0  /
drwxr-xr-x root    root    system_u:object_r:etc_t:s0  etc
lrwxrwxrwx root    root    system_u:object_r:locale_t:s0  localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London
dr-xr-xr-x root    root    system_u:object_r:root_t:s0    ..
drwxr-xr-x root    root    system_u:object_r:usr_t:s0    usr
drwxr-xr-x root    root    system_u:object_r:usr_t:s0    share
drwxr-xr-x root    root    system_u:object_r:locale_t:s0    zoneinfo
drwxr-xr-x root    root    system_u:object_r:locale_t:s0    Europe
-rw-r--r-- pioruns pioruns system_u:object_r:locale_t:s0    London

$ rpm -V filesystem tzdata
.....UG..    /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Belfast
.....UG..    /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Guernsey
.....UG..    /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Isle_of_Man
.....UG..    /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Jersey
.....UG..    /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London
.....UG..    /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB
.....UG..    /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB-Eire

Does it look correct?

6

That one looks odd. On my system it’s owned by root:root like the other TZ objects.

1 Like
7

Thank you! That sorted it out. My user name owned this file, I don’t know why it happened. But changing ownership back to root solved it. Thanks a lot!

1 Like