18.04: "untrusted launcher" -- how to make it *permanently* trusted

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 27 Apr 2019 08:27:40 -0400 (EDT) Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:

> 
> I recently upgraded a batch of diskless workstations to Ubuntu 14.04 using 
> DRBL.  Everything is working well, except for one small problem:  We have some 
> launcher files (.desktop) files in the login account Desktop folder, but even 
> though they are chmod +x (and some are in fact direct copies from 
> /usr/share/applications) they come up as "untrusted".  (And yes, they are 
> properly owned by the user and group, etc.).  They work, once you click "Trust 
> and execute", but they become untrusted again on reboot.

OK, some additional web searching shows that this is a "security feature" of
Gnome3.  Argh!  This is a serious pain for someone managing a batch of 
desktops (I guess it make some sense for relatively brainless people running 
Linux on their home machines).  But it makes things difficult for a system 
admin like me.  I am also wondering if the fact that the /home file system is 
NFS mounted is causing problems.

Has *ANYONE* else had this issue?
 

> 
> What is going on here?  Is there some additional magic needed somewhere?  Or 
> is it just that with GNome 3 / Ubuntu 18.04 you just cannot have 
> *applications* on the Desktop (everything *must* be in "favorites" or you must 
> search for it everytime).
> 
> And no, SELinux is not running on the Ubuntu 18.04 machines, although SELinux 
> is running on the (CentOS) file server for the /home file system, which is NFS 
> mounted on the diskless workstations (is there some there that needs to be 
> done?).
> 

-- 
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