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arbitarycounterfactual

Member

Registered: 2024-07-17

Posts: 20

Can not upload files from {browsers, applications}, no file picker.

On browsers such as chrome and applications such as discord, I can't upload any files because on clicking wherever it asks to "choose" a file it does nothing. The file picker or dialogue or whatever it is called, does not appear at all. However, on firefox, it works.

[Both chrome and discord uses GTK where chrome presumably uses QT, maybe there's something wrong with GTK or gtk dependent packages?]

I've had this issue for about three months now, updated countless times to no avail.

I found this post. I saw this possibility of something being wrong with xdg-desktop-portal. Anyway, from

First of all, let's test whether the XDG portal is connected to DBUS properly

qdbus org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop org.freedesktop.portal.Settings.Read org.freedesktop.appearance color-scheme

Where qdbus came from qt5-tools package.

I don't know how this works, but it does not work with my system.

I took a look at the logs of xdg-desktop-portal like so.

journalctl --user-unit=xdg-desktop-portal -S "20:00:05"

 

Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio systemd[823]: Stopping Portal service...
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio systemd[823]: Stopped Portal service.
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio systemd[823]: Starting Portal service...
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Lockdown as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: The preferred method to match portal implementations to desktop environments is to use the portals.conf(5) configuration file
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: No skeleton to export
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.AppChooser as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Print as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Notification as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Inhibit as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Access as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Account as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Email as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Choosing gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.DynamicLauncher as a last-resort fallback
Jul 17 20:00:05 patxio systemd[823]: Started Portal service.
Jul 17 20:01:23 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Backend call failed: Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.gtk': startup job failed
Jul 17 20:01:31 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Backend call failed: Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.gtk': startup job failed
Jul 17 20:01:34 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Backend call failed: Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.gtk': startup job failed
Jul 17 20:01:57 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Backend call failed: Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.gtk': startup job failed
Jul 17 20:01:58 patxio xdg-desktop-por[75756]: Backend call failed: Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.gtk': startup job failed

the "Backend call failed: Could not activate remote peer" message seems interesting since each time I click on "choose" option in chrome (where the file picker should pop up), this message is reported.

I searched the web, but could not find anything useful.

[SOLVED]
In the bottom of that Post,

I fixed this by running `systemctl --user import-environment DISPLAY XAUTHORITY` and then `systemctl --user restart xdg-desktop-portal-gtk`. It seems if you're not using a DE this needs to be run manually to set the environment variables for startup of xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.

Remember you may just have xdg-desktop-portal which you can find by `pacman -Qi <package> | grep  xdg`.

Last edited by arbitarycounterfactual (2024-07-17 15:34:54)