SNAP packages / broken symlinks

snap
1

Hi,

I’m using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and I see that my ~/snap/ packages directories contains a lot of broken symlinks from multiple packages. (firefox,thunderbird,gimp,remmina,libreoffice,snapd,snap-store, …)

The broken symlinks are mostly in the ~/snap/[package]/common/.cache directories and in “immodules” and “gio-modules” sub-directories.

The issue is that the symlinks in these directories are pointing to their /snap/[package]/ path but to a “gnome-platform” directory which does not exist.

Here are some examples:

./snap/libreoffice/common/.cache/gio-modules/libgiognutls.so -> /snap/libreoffice/285/gnome-platform/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gio/modules/libgiognutls.so

./snap/gimp/common/.cache/gio-modules/libgiognutls.so -> /snap/gimp/393/data-dir/gnome-platform/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gio/modules/libgiognutls.so

./snap/firefox/common/.cache/immodules/im-broadway.so -> /snap/firefox/2908/gnome-platform/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/immodules/im-broadway.so

./snap/snapd-desktop-integration/common/.cache/gio-modules/libgioenvironmentproxy.so -> /snap/snapd-desktop-integration/83/gnome-platform/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gio/modules/libgioenvironmentproxy.so

Basically the “gnome-platform/” in the path should be removed for the symlinks to be correct.

Other packages do omit “gnome-platform/” and have valid symlinks for “gio-modules” and “immodules”.

You can find all these broken symlinks by issuing the following command: “find ~/snap -xtype l -ls”

So my questions are, is this normal ? is there a bad side effect when running these snap packages ?

Regards.

2

There probably will be a gnome-platform directory in the context of the current snap; try:

snap run --shell firefox
ls $SNAP
exit

Chances are, that symlink from the perspective of the snapped app is valid. It’ll only be when you’re looking at it from the host it looks dangling.

3

Yes, you are right, this is the case for every package, thank you for the explanation :slight_smile:

When I ran “snap run -shell firefox” the first time I got these errors, but not the second time I ran it:

update.go:85: cannot change mount namespace according to change mount (/var/lib/snapd/hostfs/usr/share/gimp/2.0/help /usr/share/gimp/2.0/help none bind,ro 0 0): cannot open directory “/var/lib/snapd”: permission denied

update.go:85: cannot change mount namespace according to change mount (/var/lib/snapd/hostfs/usr/share/gtk-doc /usr/share/gtk-doc none bind,ro 0 0): cannot open directory “/var/lib/snapd”: permission denied

update.go:85: cannot change mount namespace according to change mount (/var/lib/snapd/hostfs/usr/share/libreoffice/help /usr/share/libreoffice/help none bind,ro 0 0): cannot open directory “/var/lib/snapd”: permission denied

update.go:85: cannot change mount namespace according to change mount (/var/lib/snapd/hostfs/usr/share/xubuntu-docs /usr/share/xubuntu-docs none bind,ro 0 0): cannot open directory “/var/lib/snapd”: permission denied

Do you know why ?