[solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

teateawhy · 2016-11-06 13:58:39

Seems to come from the %u in the .desktop file:

/usr/share/applications
% grep '%u' *
elinks.desktop:Exec=/usr/bin/elinks %u
firefox.desktop:Exec=firefox %u
firefox.desktop:Exec=firefox --new-window %u
firefox.desktop:Exec=firefox --private-window %u

Deleting the %u solves the issue. Why is it there?

Last edited by teateawhy (2016-12-17 23:22:28)

ooo · 2016-11-06 14:17:40

%u stands for single url in .desktop files, and it should be required if you wan't to open e.g. external links with firefox: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ … 01s06.html

It should get omitted if there's no URL though. I'm thinking this could be a bug in your application launcher.
For me starting firefox in gnome-shell opens the start page, and not "%u".

olive · 2016-11-06 14:29:25

How to you launch firefox? Which Desktop are you using? It works fine for me under Xfce

teateawhy · 2016-11-06 15:27:09

plasma-desktop 5.8.3-1

To start firefox, i'm using the autostart option in the KDE system settings. I clicked on add programm, and chose firefox. KDE chose "firefox %u" as the command to execute, on its own.

Last edited by teateawhy (2016-11-06 15:28:05)

R00KIE · 2016-11-06 15:55:51

teateawhy wrote:

plasma-desktop 5.8.3-1
To start firefox, i'm using the autostart option in the KDE system settings. I clicked on add programm, and chose firefox. KDE chose "firefox %u" as the command to execute, on its own.

Then it's doing exactly what you told it to do. Edit the autostart entry and remove the %u and revert your changes to the desktop file.

teateawhy · 2016-11-06 16:02:36

R00KIE wrote:

teateawhy wrote:
plasma-desktop 5.8.3-1
To start firefox, i'm using the autostart option in the KDE system settings. I clicked on add programm, and chose firefox. KDE chose "firefox %u" as the command to execute, on its own.
Then it's doing exactly what you told it to do. Edit the autostart entry and remove the %u and revert your changes to the desktop file.

I didn't tell it to do so. I didn't type in "firefox %u". I only clicked on the firefox icon, in a list of applications. Thus, the string "firefox %u" must be saved somewhere in a file. I already found out that this exact string is in the .desktop file above. I think we can assume that the string was indeed extracted from the .desktop file.

R00KIE · 2016-11-06 17:28:20

That string is supposed to be in the desktop file, otherwise some functionality will break.

Just because you can use a desktop file as a template to automatically get the icon and executable name when creating an autostart entry, it doesn't exempt you from checking if everything is correct, hence the autostart entry is doing exactly what you told it to do.

Maybe kde should have been smarter and removed that %u it got from the desktop file, submit a bug report in the kde bug tracker, explain the problem and things might improve in a future version of kde.

teateawhy · 2016-12-17 23:22:14

Made a bugreport which was solved in KDE 5.8.4 .

Arch Linux

#1 2016-11-06 13:58:39

[solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

#2 2016-11-06 14:17:40

Re: [solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

#3 2016-11-06 14:29:25

Re: [solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

#4 2016-11-06 15:27:09

Re: [solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

#5 2016-11-06 15:55:51

Re: [solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

#6 2016-11-06 16:02:36

Re: [solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

#7 2016-11-06 17:28:20

Re: [solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

#8 2016-12-17 23:22:14

Re: [solved] firefox tries to open address "%u" at startup

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