[Bug 1511154] Re: xdg-settings set <anything> fails with status 2 because of a small glitch
chris
1511154 at bugs.launchpad.net
Thu Mar 31 18:44:17 UTC 2016
Had the same problem and can confirm editing /usr/bin/xdg-settings fixes
the problem!
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1511154
Title:
xdg-settings set <anything> fails with status 2 because of a small
glitch
Status in xdg-utils package in Ubuntu:
Fix Released
Bug description:
(Existing description has been broken up into sections.)
[Impact]
The first user-facing symptom: Google Chrome stable is correctly set
as the default browser in System Settings / Details / Default
Applications as well as in
update-alternatives --display x-www-browser
yet it keeps complaining about not being a default browser. Clicking
"Make Google Chrome the default browser." on Chrome's settings page
has no response.
The problem is reported here http://askubuntu.com/questions/688779
/google-chrome-stable-keeps-asking-if-it-should-be-set-to-default but
the answer is somewhat wrong.
[Test Case]
I have successfully reproduced and debugged the problem. I managed to
establish that it is connected to xdg-utils, namely to /usr/bin/xdg-
settings script.
michal at furia:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 15.10
Release: 15.10
Codename: wily
michal at furia:~$ xdg-settings get default-web-browser
firefox.desktop
michal at furia:~$ xdg-settings set default-web-browser google-chrome.desktop
michal at furia:~$ echo $?
2
michal at furia:~$ xdg-settings get default-web-browser
firefox.desktop
There is a function in /usr/bin/xdg-settings called
desktop_file_to_binary() and it has a bug. It is slightly different
than the one in the vanilla xdg-utils 1.1.0 rc3. It is implemented in
scripts/xdg-utils-common.in.
See line 65 in xdg-utils-1.1.0~rc3+git20150907/scripts/xdg-utils-
common.in :
command="`grep -E "^Exec(\[[^]=]*])?=" "$file" | cut -d= -f 2- | sed
-e 's/ .*$//'`"
When executed against google-chrome.desktop or firefox.desktop it
results with:
google-chrome-stable
google-chrome-stable
google-chrome-stable
or
firefox
firefox
firefox
respectively.
When passed to `which` and then to `readlink -f` it results with no
path to the actual binary. In the vanilla xdg-utils package (version
1.1.0 rc3) the `sed` part is replaced with `first_word`. An
alternative would be adding `| head -n 1`.
Then we would have only one `google-chrome-stable` or `firefox` which
in turn would result with the actual path to binary resolved correctly
and that would make xdg-settings work fine.
Also, it is possible to set Google Chrome as the default browser via
its preferences and the aforementioned first user-facing symptom is
gone.
[Regression Potential]
Limited. The commands after the modified lines assume that there is
only one line, so passing the output of the modified lines through
`head -n1` should ensure that. In the case of there being 0 or 1 lines
before the `head -n1` command, nothing will be changed.
In the worst case, there may exist a .desktop file where the first
Exec line isn't the main program (mentioned in comment 2 below). In
that case, however, this change will result in the incorrect program
being chosen; this may or may not be better than the command not
working at all.
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