I am sorry but I cannot reproduce this.
Please give on details what kind of permissions this less privileged user has on global and survey level.
He must have some kind of survey level privileges because otherwise the particulat survey would not be listed in the survey dropdown on copy.

I tried also with all permissons granted on survey level, but the error is still produced. Admin and the less-privileged user both belong to the same group, and the less-privileged user can only see surveys in it's own group.

Sorry, still can't reproduce. Can you please try to reproduce this on our demo installation and give us the login data of the particular user?

The demo installations seems to be broken: Table '2_demo.lime_survey_permissions' doesn't exist: SELECT a.*, surveyls_title, surveyls_description, surveyls_welcometext, surveyls_url FROM lime_surveys AS a INNER JOIN lime_surveys_languagesettings on (surveyls_survey_id=a.sid and surveyls_language=a.language) WHERE a.sid in (select sid from lime_survey_permissions where uid=161 and permission='survey' and read_p=1) order by active DESC, surveyls_title

Don't know if I broke it or someone else? I added a new group bug_6065 and user user_bug_6065 to that group (members admin, user_bug_6065). Created a survey as admin (with survey language Suomi/Finnish). After logging out and trying to log in as user_bug_6065, the above error is received. So cannot test at the moment.

hotspants: no you didnt. I just fixed the demo. please try again.

Btw, user_bug_6065 has password: 'test'

Now I get: Table '2_demo.lime_quota_members' doesn't exist:SELECT lime_quota_members.* FROM lime_quota_members WHERE lime_quota_members.sid=49963

Fixed. Sorry, try again, please ;)

Now I get the same error as in our own environment: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'and surveyls_survey_id= and surveyls_language='en'' at line 1:SELECT * FROM lime_surveys,lime_surveys_languagesettings WHERE sid= and surveyls_survey_id= and surveyls_language='en'

i.e. as user_bug_6065 I copied the survey "bug 6065" to the name "test2 / copied from admin"

Btw, when debug=1, I also get:
Notice: Undefined index: LEMsid in /opt/bitnami/limesurvey/classes/expressions/LimeExpressionManager.php on line 3332 Notice: Undefined index: s_lang in /opt/bitnami/limesurvey/common_functions.php on line 3069

Fix committed to master branch: http://bugs.limesurvey.org/plugin.php?page=Source/view&id=8345

Thank you very much. That way I could reproduce and resolve it!

Fix committed to Yii branch: http://bugs.limesurvey.org/plugin.php?page=Source/view&id=8346

Good to hear! Can you estimate when the fix will be released? Would it break the ComfortUpdate if i were to patch my installation myself? i.e. add
LimeExpressionManager::SetSurveyId($newsid); to admin/import_functions.php?

Thanks again

A new version will be released tomorrow.
Yes, you can add the line without breaking ComfortUpdate.

One more thing: I find it confusing when having copied a survey, the original is set active instead of the newly created one. You'd have to click "Go to survey" or select the new survey from to drop down list to get to the new survey. I have made the mistake of modifying the original while I thought I was working with the new one more than a few times. That's the main reason I keep the survey permissions as restrictive as possible (for non-admin users). I'll attach a screen shot from the demo environment just to clarify.