Still struggling with the Flatpak sandbox

April 17, 2023 — BarryK

I have posted that Flatpak does not work with ext4 fscrypt:

https://bkhome.org/news/202304/flatpak-does-not-work-with-ext4-folder-encryption.html

I have hunted, found some discussion, but no solution. For example:

https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/4281

So for Easy 5.2.2, had to resort to placing the app home path in an unencrypted folder.

Most of the Flatpaks I have placed into the Installer work, or at least start up. However, today received a request from forum member 'hway212' to add QGIS Flatpak. Have done that, but when attempt to start it in a terminal:

# qgis
localuser:qgis being added to access control list
ldconfig: Can't create temporary cache file /run/ld-so-cache-dir/b2696e551bc851f52ac5db1c499458b051303e9d366f34c93f1dde2ded00f7cc.1qWJjn~: Required key not available
error: ldconfig failed, exit status 256
#

"Required key not available" is what you get when an app is unable to write in a ext4 encrypted folder.

I mounted a tmpfs on /run, so it would not be encrypted, but got same error message. Very frustrating!

Changing the subject slightly, I thought that I had fixed a problem with getting dbus errors when a Flatpak (and AppImage) starts, but found that some Flatpaks still report errors. I fixed it by inserting "--socket=system-bus" when launch the app. Added some more "--socket=" parameters just in case:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/6792d914f48f72f9e0fd7904fd18a4118f266209

if you are running Easy 5.2.2, you can insert these yourself. Open /usr/bin/<app name>.bin in Geany and edit.

Back onto QGIS ...sigh. I have a couple ideas, will try them and append to this blog post.

EDIT 2023-04-18:
Haven't been able to fix QGIS. Currently, have tested 29 flatpaks, and they all work except QGIS. I have raised an issue at the QGIS project site:

https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/issues/52750

...but, there are 4,129 open issues, so I'm not expecting a speedy response, perhaps no response.

Tags: easy