Ubuntu Software center crashes when trying to open, but open successfully if tried to open via terminal.

Hi, thanks for reporting this issue.
Can you please try running Software Centrefrom the terminal without using sudo (i.e. just 'software-center') to see if the behaviour is the same as when you try to run it from the menu. If you experience the same behaviour, please come back and attach any terminal output which will hopefully help us look at the problem.
Thanks

No, it does not open and gives this error:
WARNING:root:trying to fix not writable cache directory
ERROR:root:failed to fix not writable cache directory
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/paths.py", line 31, in try_to_fixup_root_owned_dir_via_remove
    os.rmdir(directory)
OSError: [Errno 39] Directory not empty: '/home/username/.cache/software-center'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/software-center", line 38, in <module>
    import softwarecenter.log
  File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/log.py", line 94, in <module>
    backupCount=5)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/logging/handlers.py", line 112, in __init__
    BaseRotatingHandler.__init__(self, filename, mode, encoding, delay)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/logging/handlers.py", line 64, in __init__
    logging.FileHandler.__init__(self, filename, mode, encoding, delay)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/logging/__init__.py", line 827, in __init__
    StreamHandler.__init__(self, self._open())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/logging/__init__.py", line 846, in _open
    stream = open(self.baseFilename, self.mode)
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home/username/.cache/software-center/software-center.log'

But this used to work fine till like last month end, suddenly started crashing ...

Thanks for the follow up. Did this start happening straight after you upgraded or just started happening?
It appears that the permissions may be incorrect on your .cache directory or sub-directories.

Could you please run the following commands in a terminal and attach the output here.
ls -l ~/.cache
ls -l ~/.cache/software-center

You can use sudo on these commands if you get permission denied errors.

We should be able to help you fix the problem but don't yet know what caused it to happen. It's possibly not a bug with Software Centre but something that has been caused by something else.
Do you recall doing any upgrades or changing anything when this started?
Do you have other permission issues with other programs or places in your home directory?

Output of ls -l ~/.cache

Output of ls -l ~/.cache/software-center

No, it just started happening when I removed few junk programs (unwanted programs that I had installed) using software center. Normally I use apt-get or dpkg commands via terminal to remove and install stuff. But just to try software-center I gave it a try and since after that, its crashing.

Till now, I have not checked or known any permission issues, may be because I did not attempt to check or I dont know how to check...if there's one way to check all permissions ...

Is your username for this system actually 'username' or did you mask it when you posted the output?
The issue is your software-center directory in the .cache directory is owned by root.

Try this command:

sudo chown -R username:username ~/.cache

Then try starting Software Centre. (Note the uppercase -R is important and also if your username is actually something else, replace it in the command)

Let us know if this fixes your problem

Sorry missed a bit off that command. Do this instead:

sudo chown -R username:username ~/.cache/software-center

Hey,
Thanks a ton .. now I can successfully open software-center without any problems :)

Thanks once again :)

I have another problem with my via chipsets .. do i have to create another bug in appropriate section??

Glad to help. If you think of any more information that might help us to determine if this is a bug caused by Software Center (or perhaps anotherpackage), please report it back here. For now, I'm going to mark this as invalid.

In regards to your other bug, if it is just troubleshooting that you need, rather than raise a bug report try getting help somewhere such as Ubuntu Forums or on irc (#ubuntu channel on freenode). If it is actually a bug, then you should raise it as a new bug report.

Thanks!

I have followed this thread becasue I had similar problem , but it did not fix mine. :-(

Sorry....printed retraction: I forgot to restart the system.....It did work. Thanks a ton Aaron P. you guys and gals are great and provide a great service for the Linux/Unix community. The world needs some ammo again monopolies like (ms) and others.

-sid