Arch Linux

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

[solved] Openbox + Tracker integration

OK, here is a little issue I have with Openbox and Tracker.

When I use tracker-search-tool in openbox it works fine as far as searching for stuff is concerned but when I try to open one of the documents from the search results list nothing happens. 
So I've opened tracker-search-tool from the terminal to see what's going on and the message that appears when I double click on a document looks like this:

xdg-open  no method available for opening '/path/to/file'

After some experimentation I've discovered that xdg-open seems to be looking for firefox in /usr/bin and it doesn't find it since I don't use firefox (I use swiftweasel).  When I symlink /usr/bin/swiftweasel to /usr/bin/firefox it all seems to work, but using swiftweasel to try an open various types of documents is not a very good solution at all.  I get much better results if I symlink thunar to /usr/bin/firefox - which pretty much opens everything in the appropriate applications....  It's a very crude hack though, and I'm looking for a more elegant solution as well as some understanding of how mime types/default apps infrastructure works in openbox.

Some questions:
1) Why is xdg-open looking for firefox even if I have no firefox installed (and never had)?
2) Is there any way of customizing xdg-open behavior, any way to specify which app/apps should be used to open given types of files?

I hope all this is not too confusing...  Anyone has any ideas/suggestions?

Last edited by fwojciec (2007-09-13 21:33:57)

zenix

Member

From: Earth - Save it!

Registered: 2007-08-05

Posts: 104

Website

Re: [solved] Openbox + Tracker integration

Have you checked your setting for $BROWSER? xdg-open reads this and uses it as the browser to open http:// links. Check your terminal's RC file (bash is "$HOME/.bashrc", zsh is "$HOME/.zshrc", etc)

Although that may not fix it entierly since that is for urls and not for opening a directory. Actually, it always uses $BROWSER to open anything, wether or not it is a directory, text file, or binary. Anyways, hope I helped

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fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: [solved] Openbox + Tracker integration

thanks zenix, very helpful indeed!  i knew there must have been something I was overlooking...  can't believe it was so simple and totally forgot about what I had set in .bashrc...