Comment 8 for bug 1854588

The problem is not in firefox or mate, it's in gdebi-gtk, and specifically in GDebiGtk.py, line 619:

os.execv(pkexec_cmd, pkexec_args+gdebi_args)

This replaces the current process with a pkexec call. This is not a valid usage of pkexec, as pkexec requires the parent process to not be init (ppid!=1).

To reproduce the issue without firefox, one can just run `setsid gdebi-gtk package.deb`.

In a similar bug report for update-manager (LP: #1020115), this flag was used instead of os.execv:

flags = GObject.SPAWN_DO_NOT_REAP_CHILD
https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/update-manager/main/view/head:/UpdateManager/backend/InstallBackendSynaptic.py#L63

Is gdebi still maintained by Ubuntu developers, or should we report this in Debian?
Can we propose a patch similar to the update manager, or even just use a simple shell wrapper?