Can't access rustup documentation with Firefox

snap
1

Like the title says, rustup doc opens Firefox, and I get an “access denied” error.

In my googling, I’ve discovered that snap disallows access to any hidden file. So /home/iain/.rustup/anything_at_all is off limits.

Security is nice, but arbitrarily denying me access to my own files is a little much.

Is there a way I can access Rust documentation offline?

Thanks

2

Bueller? Bueller?

How do I access my files, or do I have to find a non-snap browser? In this state, snap is less than useless to me. It refuses to let me access my files.

3

Can you go the other way around and start in Firefox? If you go Ctrl + O, a portal file chooser appears, which supports proxying those hidden files. However, I’m pretty sure it only supports one file at a time right now, which might not be enough for Rust’s docs.

A very easy-to-implement idea would be a bind mount:

mkdir -p ~/anything-at-all
sudo mount --bind ~/.rustup/anything_at_all ~/anything-at-all
firefox ~/anything-at-all/the_docs.html
4

^O is not really a solution, as there are manymany pages of documentation.

According to people in other forums, Firefox should have access to /home/iain/.rustup/whatever, but refuses to open the pages. In other words, snap connections shows that Firefox has the personal-files interface connected and everything.

The bind mount works, so I’ll use that. Not really a solution as the problem with snap and Firefox still exists – the bind mount simply sidesteps it.

Thanks

5

The only personal-files declaration I’m seeing is this:

  dot-mozilla-firefox:
    interface: personal-files
    read:
    - $HOME/.mozilla/firefox

…which only gives access to $HOME/.mozilla/firefox.

Another option I think is quite attractive (and rustup should probably offer this by default): Run a tiny webserver to serve those HTML files via HTTP, see https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/4966.

There’s

As for the local files in a hidden folder, the snap policies explicitly forbid accessing them in this way, so that’s working as intended.

6

Aha. I was led to believe that the personal-files interface allowed access to all files under $HOME.

Thanks for the update on that.

A tiny webserver also looks attractive. Thanks.

1 Like