I installed flatpak and one application. I have now removed both flatpak and that application, and I'm getting this message for AFAICS whenever I start a GUI application (for example, meld or pluma):
dconf-WARNING **: 18:37:20.153: Unable to open /home/user/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/dconf/profile/user: Permission denied
I'm using a fresh install of Ubuntu Mate 18.04 and I don't remember seeing this before.
For me the issue was solved by deleting the whole flatpak directory (sudo rm -rf ~/.local/share/flatpak/), but may not want to do that if you're currently using any flatpak apps or want to keep their config files.
In that case it's probably better to try to use something like this (as sugested by @Rinzwind): sudo chown $USER:$USER ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/dconf/profile/user
I had the problem when launching Firefox by clicking a link inside a Thunderbird's message. The Firefox profile was locked, and in the terminal where Thunderbird was launched, I got the message «dconf-WARNING **: Unable to open /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/dconf/profile/user: Permission denied». In deed, I later found there was no "/dconf/profile/user" present in the file system. Solved the issue by reinstalling flatpak packages from repository.
Thunderbird links worked again without locking the Firefox profile.
Do not let Firefox write in that file! , the question is why FF want to access Flatpak container settings ?
-save : ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/dconf/profile/user -chown : ( let FF to write in ) -diff : than upload the diff result
--- after this you can put back the original file in place.
ls -l ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/dconf/profile/userand document the result and then do asudo chown $USER:$USER ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/dconf/profile/userand see if that fixes it.~/.local/share/flatpakwas owned byroot. (Maybe as a result ofsudo flatpak install.. Is that wrong?) I simply deleted the folder (withsudo) and the issue is gone.