[okular] [Bug 389576] New: Okular snap package cannot access files outside home directory

[bugzilla_noreply at kde.org]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=389576

            Bug ID: 389576
           Summary: Okular snap package cannot access files outside home
                    directory
           Product: okular
           Version: 1.0.0
          Platform: Ubuntu Packages
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
          Assignee: okular-devel at kde.org
          Reporter: 4aa7f31e at opayq.com
  Target Milestone: ---

I installed okular on Ubuntu 17.10 via snap (“sudo snap install okular”). The
okular snap seems to use “strict” confinement and is thus unable to access
files outside the user’s home directory even for reading. However, for a
“viewer”-type application like okular, this is very problematic:

– When downloading a file (e.g. PDF) in a browser like Firefox and choosing to
open the file (instead of saving it somewhere in the home directory), the
browser will typically place the file in /tmp/ and then open it using the
default viewer for that file type. Since /tmp/ is outside the user’s home
directory, okular is unable to open the file.

– When opening documentation which is installed to system directories (e.g.
/usr/share/…) along with its corresponding application, okular is likewise
unable to open the documentation files for viewing. For example, the “texdoc”
program for the TeX typesetting system looks up the documentation for a
specified package (typically in PDF format) and runs the default (PDF) viewer
to show the documentation. This fails if the okular snap application is set as
the default PDF viewer.

– Any files on mounted file systems, such as external storage (USB drives, SD
cards, external hard drives…), network shares, etc., cannot be viewed with
okular.

Attempting to open any such files results in a dialog with the following error
message: “Could not open file:///path/to/file”. This does not provide any
explanation for the reason of the failure.

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