Bleachbit 5.0.0 Portable bug: fails to start on UNC path

[rsauve]

I just upgraded Bleachbit Portable from 4.6.2 to 5.0.0 (Windows version).

With version 4.6.2 I could launch the bleachbit.exe file over our network from a Windows guest VM (Windows 10 and 11).
The portable version is located on the host PC (fully updated Windows 10 Pro).

I even kept a desktop shortcut to the program on the guest VM. This worked well for all my guest Windows VMs.
Since upgrading to version 5.0.0 I can no longer launch bleachbit.exe on my Windows guest VMs from the host PC over the network.
Beachbit Portable will only work if I copy the folder to the VM and then launch it from there.

I copied version 4.6.2 to the host PC in different location and was able to launch it from the VM guest.
The only modification I made to version 5.0.0 was to overwrite version 4.6.2 bleachbit.ini file in the 5.0.0 folder.

I tied overwriting the bleachbit.ini file with the default 5.0.0 version but the same thing happened. No go.

When I launch beachbit.exe 5.0.0 I get the User Account Control window but nothing after that.

When I look for beachbit.exe in the TaskManager --> Details it is not there.
This bug should be easy to reproduce unless something has gone completely haywire with my system.

[az0]

Does the path contain the term "bin"?

For troubleshooting, try a shorter, simpler pathname, and let me know how it goes.

[rsauve]

For testing I placed BleachBit Portable on my Windows 10 host PC in:
D:\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4 (Version 4.6.2)
D:\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5 (Version 5.0.0)

On my Windows 10 VM I see the above at:
\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4
\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5

When I execute \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4\bleachbit.exe
I get the User Account Control window (select Yes) and the BleachBit main program window opens.
All good.

When I execute \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe
I get the User Account Control window (select Yes) and nothing happens.
No good.

Where my regular BleachBit Portable program lives is in:
D:\Download\Portable Programs\BleachBit-Portable
This does have a longer path with spaces which might have been the issue but the test installation paths above show otherwise.

[az0]

That's an interesting bug. Thanks for the detailed info.

Inside the VM, what happens if you have map the UNC path \\sam\temp to a drive letter such as D: or T: ?

Also, for troubleshooting, would you please open a Command Prompt and run \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe? This may show extra info. Try adding switches such as:

• --help
• --sysinfo
• --gui --debug

The --debug switch does not show all the info it should in 5.0.0 stable release that you have, but it is fixed in build 2963.

Of course, another test would be to copy the BleachBit-Portable5 to C:\ inside the VM and run it from C:.

[rsauve]

Inside the VM, what happens if you have map the UNC path \\\sam\temp to a drive letter such as D: or T: ?

From Windows 10 Guest VM:

"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4\bleachbit.exe" Ran as normal
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe" Prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.

Mapped \Sam\Temp to drive T:
No change same result as above.

Also, for troubleshooting, would you please open a Command Prompt and run \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe? This may show extra info. Try adding switches such as:

\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe --help 'No prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.'
\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe --sysinfo 'No prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.'
\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe --gui --debug 'Prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.'

Of course, another test would be to copy the BleachBit-Portable5 to C:\ inside the VM and run it from C:.

Yes, Guest VM has a copy of BleachBit Portable (version 5.0.0):
C:\Users\Robert\Downloads\BleachBit-Portable

This works fine.

[az0]

Are you using VMware Workstation, Oracle VirtualBox, or another virtualization system?

"\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe" Prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.

When the User Account Control (UAC) dialog shows, try answering "No." Does BleachBit start then? If so, then the administrator account may not have access to the file share.

\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe --help 'No prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.'
\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe --sysinfo 'No prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.'
\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit.exe --gui --debug 'Prompted "User Account Control", nothing happened after that.'

I am sorry, I made a mistake. Would you please try bleachbit_console.exe instead of bleachbit.exe? Specifically

"\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --help
"\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --sysinfo
"\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --gui --debug --no-uac

Please run these from an existing command prompt window. Otherwise, the information may quickly disappear.

[rsauve]

I am using VituralBox Version 7.1.10.
I first discovered this issue when running version 5.0.0 over the network with one of our Windows 10 PCs.
BleachBit 5.0.0 faults the same way as the VM guest does while accessing it over the network. BleachBit 4.6.2 works fine.

I will run bleachbit_console.exe from our Windows 10 PC to the network share hosting BleachBit 5.0.0 and 4.6.2.

BleachBit 5.0.0
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --help
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --sysinfo
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --gui --debug --no-uac

BleachBit 4.6.2
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4\bleachbit_console.exe" --help
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4\bleachbit_console.exe" --sysinfo
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4\bleachbit_console.exe" --gui --debug --no-uac

[rsauve]

Update

I just had a look at the BleachBit Portable 5.0.0 ini file in path \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5
It was not the same as in \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4\ which has my current configuration.
Both of them are here in this .zip file:
BleachBit-Portable5-ini.zip

After copying \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable4\BleachBit.ini to \\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5
I no longer see the error with --sysinfo shown previously.
"\\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --sysinfo

However, "\sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe" --gui --debug --no-uac
fails the same way as shown previously.

[az0]

Thank you for the info. The --sysinfo looks okay, so the Python and command line interface works okay, and the GLib errors here about an absolute path are the problem for me to focus on. This is related to the update in GTK 3.18 to 3.24 that happened between BleachBit 4.6.2 and BleachBit 5.0.0.

Wed 02/07/2025 SALLY-PC:>\\Sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\bleachbit_console.exe --gui-debug-no-uac
XDG_DATA_DIRS=\\Sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\share
user_locale: en_AU, locale_dir: \\Sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\share\locale\
Windows translation domain set to: bleachbit, dir: \\Sam\Temp\BleachBit-Portable5\share\locale\
**
GLib: ERROR:../src/glib-2-0931cd8d4d.clean/glib/gwin32.c:1427:g_win32_find_helper_executable_path: assertion failed: (g_p
ath_is_absolute (executable_path))
Bail out! GLib: ERROR:../src/glib-2-0931cd8d4d.clean/glib/gwin32.c:1427:g_win32_find_helper_executable_path: assertion fa
iled: (g_path_is_absolute (executable_path))

What about running t:\bleachbit-portable5\bleachbit_console.exe --gui --debug --no-uac?

Also please try changing directory and a relative path like this

t:
cd\bleachbit-portable5
bleachbit_console.exe --gui --debug --no-uac

[rsauve]

Okay, back on the Windows 10 PC. We will keep the VMs out of this for now.

The t: drive is already in use under this PC so I used u: instead.

u:\bleachbit-portable5\bleachbit_console.exe --gui --debug --no-uac

BleachBit 5.0.0 gui appears on the desktop.

Some extra output appears in the Command Prompt window after quiting out of BleachBit

u:
cd \bleachbit-portable5
bleachbit_console.exe --gui --debug --no-uac

Does the same as above.

[az0]

I tested VirtualBox 7.1.8 with Windows 11 guest with drive S: mapped to \vboxsrv\shared .

With UNC path, it fails like yours. There is no GUI.

C:\Users\username>\\VBOXSVR\shared\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\bleachbit_console.exe --no-uac --debug --
gui
XDG_DATA_DIRS=\\VBOXSVR\shared\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\share
user_locale: en_US, locale_dir: \\VBOXSVR\shared\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\share\locale\
Windows translation domain set to: bleachbit, dir: \\VBOXSVR\shared\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\share\locale\
**
GLib:ERROR:../src/glib-2-0931cd8d4d.clean/glib/gwin32.c:1427:g_win32_find_helper_executable_path: assertion failed: (g_path_is_absolute (executable_path))
Bail out! GLib:ERROR:../src/glib-2-0931cd8d4d.clean/glib/gwin32.c:1427:g_win32_find_helper_executable_path: assertion failed: (g_path_is_absolute (executable_path))

Using a drive letter S: , there is a warning on the console. There is a modal dialog box with an error "the specified path does not exist," but then the BleachBit GUI launches.

C:\Users\username>S:\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\bleachbit_console.exe

(org.bleachbit.BleachBit:2344): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: 15:20:33.800: win32 session dbus binary not found

With verbose logging, I see the popup dialog about "specified path" shows when trying to elevate privileges, so from the context of the elevated privileges, the mapped drive is not accessible.

C:\Users\username>s:\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\bleachbit_console.exe --debug --gui
XDG_DATA_DIRS=s:\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\share
user_locale: en_US, locale_dir: s:\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\share\locale\
Windows translation domain set to: bleachbit, dir: s:\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\share\locale\
elevate_privileges() exe=s:\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\bleachbit_console.exe, parameters=--gui --no-uac --debug --gui
user denied the UAC dialog

Directly calling ```C:\Users\username>S:\BleachBit-5.0.0-portable\BleachBit-Portable\bleachbit_console.exe --no-uac --gui`` avoids the dialog for "the specified path does not exist." There is still a dbus warning, but the BleachBit GUI runs normally.

Conclusions

• Elevated permissions cannot access the mapped drive letter.
• glib 2.80.0 (used by gtk) is not compatible with UNC paths (even in standard user session), causing a critical error, so I filed an upstream issue with glib.

Potential workarounds.

• Run the BleachBit portable application from a local drive, like C:
• Use bleachbit_console.exe without the BleachBit GUI.
• Map the UNC path to a drive letter, and then run as bleachbit.exe --no-uac -gui to run BleachBit in a standard user session only.
• To use elevated process with mapped drive letter, map it also in the elevated context by running net use from an elevated command prompt, so it is mapped once for each context.
• Set the registry EnableLinkedConnections to allow mapped drive letter in both contexts. The registry change does not work with "prompt for credentials."

[rsauve]

It use to work in version 4.6.2.
Anyhow, I will place a copy of the portable version 5.0.0 on each PC.

[az0]

It use to work in version 4.6.2.

Yes, it's a regression, and downgrading is a potential workaround.

Anyhow, I will place a copy of the portable version 5.0.0 on each PC.

I will look for a permanent solution