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

Question

I'm sorry to just paste an error code, but I have no clue what else to try. I have looked at all the guides on this site, but nothing quite matches my issue. I am using an ubuntu subsystem on windows 10 for the project "Zettlr". Here is the error code I get when running 'yarn start'

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 node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox is owned by root and has mode 4755.
Done in 17.85s.

I am trying to run this, but it wants me to change access and ownership. chmod has no effect (which I understand is due to the windows storage system) but I have no idea how to get this program to run correctly. I have also ran chown. From my stat check, the chmod mode for the file is 777, so it should be accessable anyway. Could anyone direct me to a guide for this, or explain what I can do?

Answer 1

I think that your issue is related to running Electron in a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) environment. Specifically, the message about the SUID sandbox helper indicates that Electron is having difficulty due to permission issues with the chrome-sandbox file.

Here are the steps:

Step 1. Open WSL and navigate to your project directory.

Step 2. Change owner and permissions manually:

sudo chown root:$(whoami) node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox

Step 3. After running the above commands, check the permissions again:

ls -l node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox

The output should show that the owner is root, and the permission should be -rwsr-xr-x.

Step 4(Optional). You may need to ensure that WSL is set up to handle permissions correctly so edit the /etc/wsl.conf file:

sudo nano /etc/wsl.conf

Add or update the following lines:

[automount]
options = "metadata"

[network]
generateResolvConf = true

After saving changes, restart WSL using wsl -shutdown command.

Step5. After ensuring that permissions are set correctly, try running your application again:

yarn start