XDG Portal operation not allowed (file chooser)

[mannmitbart]

Hello Manjaro Community !

My Problem

Some applications on my system fail to open some dialogs. Those are mainly file
chooser dialogs. For example the signal-desktop app does not let me download
attachments. When starting this app in the terminal, I can see the following
error message:

[4225:0822/105334.737202:ERROR:select_file_dialog_linux_portal.cc(770)] Portal returned error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: Portal operation not allowed: Unable to open /proc/4225/root

What I tried so far

Firstly I noticed, that the xdg-desktop-portal service indeed did not activate
on my system. This was solved by copying /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to ~/.xinitrc
(and modifying it, such that my wm was starting again). But it didn’t change
anything to the original problem.

Then I read, that the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP variable must be set for the portal
service to choose the correct backend. Since xdg-desktop-portal-gtk was
already installed on my system, I used systemctl --user edit xdg-desktop-portal
to add the following to the service definition:

[Service]
Environment="XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=gtk" # I also tried 'gnome'

But this didn’t help either.

Now I’m stuck and hope for some help .

[linux-aarhus]

@mannmitbart

such that my wm was starting again

So it inside a virtual machine - right?

@mannmitbart

Portal operation not allowed: Unable to open /proc/4225/root

And you are logged in as root in said virtual machine?

[mannmitbart]

Hi @linux-aarhus, thank You for your reply. However that’s not what I meant. I’m not using a virtual machine. Manjaro is installed on my Laptop as the main system. Also I am not logged in as root, but as normal user and the desktop applications in question are all started with normal user privileges. I just commented to state the obvious: After replacing my .xinitrc of course my exec i3 was removed .

[linux-aarhus]

@mannmitbart

After replacing my .xinitrc of course my exec i3 was removed

So you are using i3?

And we are dealing with an XY problem?

Undo whatever you did - you did make a personal log of your changes - right?

A public search for topics related to i3 config on Manjaro site:wiki.manjaro.org i3 config

Or Manjaro forum search engine → Search results for 'i3 config' - Manjaro Linux Forum

[mannmitbart]

Thank You for your reply. You are quite right, in hindsight I actually had another problem, namly the login manager, which caused some inconveniences for me, which is why I replaced the original .xinitrc.

Fortunatly I could now resolve the issue not by using the xinitrc from /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc, but the one which can be found in the Manjaro Wiki. Now the system works as expected.

Edit: Seems like it didn’t help.
Edit 2: I finally resolved the issue by uninstalling xdg-desktop-portal and all packages depending on it. (This means I cannot use flatpack, but that is allright for me.)