When I try to upload a file using Firefox, the chooser refuses to open

[beermad]

One peculiar problem. From time to time, when I try to upload a file using Firefox, the chooser refuses to open. Checking the logs, I see a message:

Can’t open portal file chooser: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: No such interface “org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser” on object at path /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop

Logging out then back in seems to fix the problem, but I can’t work out what’s actually causing it.

[soundofthunder]

@beermad

what’s actually causing it.

This assumes that you’re using KDE:

Check that xdg-desktop-portal and xdg-desktop-portal-kde are installed:

sudo pacman -Qs xdg-desktop-portal

Look carefully at the output. If you also see xdg-desktop-portal-gnome is installed, uninstall it and reboot.

sudo pacman -R xdg-desktop-portal-gnome

If it’s not installed, this does nothing.

Also. provide the output from; uname -r. Cheers.

[beermad]

Thanks.

sudo pacman -Qs xdg-desktop-portal shows:

local/xdg-desktop-portal 1.18.0-2
Desktop integration portals for sandboxed apps
local/xdg-desktop-portal-kde 5.27.8-3 (plasma)
A backend implementation for xdg-desktop-portal using Qt/KF5

And uname -r returns:

6.6.0-1-MANJARO

All of which seems correct.

Digging deeper into the logs, I can see that for the second time I logged in this morning, there are some apparently significant messages:

Oct 11 10:08:00 antwerp dbus-daemon[1227]: [session uid=1000 pid=1227] Activating via systemd: service name=‘org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.kde’ unit=‘plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service’ requested by ‘:1.11302’ (uid=1000 pid=766662 comm=“/usr/lib/xdg-desktop-portal”)

and

Oct 11 10:08:00 antwerp systemd[805]: Started Xdg Desktop Portal For KDE.

Which seems to suggest that for some reason /usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service wasn’t triggered. My next obvious check will be to manually run that service next time the problem occurs and see if (as I suspect) it fixes the problem. At least in that case I’ll have a workaround.

Cheers

[soundofthunder]

@beermad

At least in that case I’ll have a workaround.

This seems relevant:

Browsers like Firefox require xdg-desktop-portal package to use OS default file manager

A known issue previously discussed on this forum is the issue where Firefox (and Chrome?) do not use the default file manager, for example to open folder after a download is completed. All suggestions in those 2 topics to update the mime files have no effect after Firefox or system has been restarted. There is a bug report in the Mozilla bugtracker that contains a solution, for which a package is required: xdg-desktop-portal this package is already installed in a default Manjaro (Gnome) install…

Although this might have already been addressed by recent updates.

[beermad]

Thanks. I’ll study that for ideas.

[mithrial]

Do you actually use KDE or another DM/WM?

[cscs]

From Unstable…
There was a point some weeks or so past that there seemed to be some instances of xdg-desktop-portal either failing or failing to start … restarting the service would fix it, and it hasnt been continued to be noticed recently (after some updates).

systemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal
systemctl --user status plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde

systemctl --user restart xdg-desktop-portal
systemctl --user restart plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde

[beermad]

KDE. Sorry, should have specified.

[beermad]

Thanks. I was guessing that would be a suitable workaround, but you’ve confirmed it.