How to make snaps access hidden files and folders in ~/home?
OS: Ubuntu 20.04
I installed gedit, kate, and libreoffice as snaps.
$ snap list (partial output)
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
gedit 3.36.0+git7.764f9c67f 537 latest/stable canonical✓ -
kate 20.04.0 64 latest/stable kde✓ -
libreoffice 6.4.3.2 177 latest/stable canonical✓ -
$ None of these snaps can access any hidden files and hidden folders in my home folder. Is that by design?
The ls -al output for ~/home is below:
$ ls -al
total 104
drwxr-xr-x 18 dkb dkb 4096 May 11 16:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 26 16:12 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dkb dkb 2782 May 9 07:59 .bash_aliases
-rw------- 1 dkb dkb 10748 May 9 19:32 .bash_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 dkb dkb 220 Apr 26 16:12 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r-- 1 dkb dkb 3953 Apr 27 15:09 .bashrc
drwx------ 14 dkb dkb 4096 May 11 15:58 .cache
drwxr-xr-x 21 dkb dkb 4096 May 11 15:58 .config
drwxr-xr-x 2 dkb dkb 4096 May 11 16:19 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 dkb dkb 4096 May 11 15:47 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 3 dkb dkb 4096 May 11 16:17 Downloads
drwx------ 3 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 30 19:10 .gnupg
-rw------- 1 dkb dkb 97 May 4 09:39 .lesshst
drwxr-xr-x 3 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 26 16:22 .local
drwx------ 5 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 27 16:34 .mozilla
drwxr-xr-x 2 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 26 16:22 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 dkb dkb 4096 May 5 16:34 Pictures
-rw-r--r-- 1 dkb dkb 807 Apr 26 16:12 .profile
drwxr-xr-x 2 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 26 16:22 Public
drwxr-xr-x 13 dkb dkb 4096 May 11 16:00 snap
drwx------ 2 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 26 16:36 .ssh
-rw-r--r-- 1 dkb dkb 0 Apr 26 16:31 .sudo_as_admin_successful
drwxr-xr-x 2 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 26 16:22 Templates
drwx------ 6 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 30 19:29 .thunderbird
drwxr-xr-x 2 dkb dkb 4096 Apr 26 16:22 Videos
$ The issue doesn't may not be about hidden files or folders, per se. If I copy ~/.config over to ~/Downloads all three snaps can open ~/Downloads/.config and the files therein.
On the other hand, if I copy ~/.bashrc to ~/bashrc, the snaps have no difficulty.
2 Answers
The Snap 'home' interface permits access only to non-hidden files and directories in a user's /home.
The Snap 'personal-files' interface permits access to all files and directories in a user's /home.
- Snap interfaces are defined in the yaml file used in snap creation.
- The
personal-filesinterface requires an additional$snap connect foo:foo-connect. Thehomeinterface does not, which makes it more convenient for some uses.
Workaround for modification of existing files only
My experience is that files in ~/.<directory> are inaccessible by default in snaps but sub-directories that are hidden, i.e.~/tmp/.<directory> seem to be accessible.
To overcome this limitation and not having to copy whole files back and forth you can create a hard-link copy of the directory recursively
example: ~/.local/... inaccessible
- open a terminal Ctrl+Alt+T
- create a temporary directory for the hardlinks
mkdir -p ~/tmp/hrdlnks
- create hardlink copy of the whole
~/.local/directorycp -al ~/.local ~/tmp/hrdlnks/
- now
~/tmp/hrdlnks/.local/should be accessible- if for some reason they are not accessible because it is a hidden directory you could just rename it from
.localtodot-local, for example.mv ~/tmp/hrdlnks/.local ~/tmp/hrdlnks/dot-local
- if for some reason they are not accessible because it is a hidden directory you could just rename it from
- When you are done modifying the file(s) just delete the temporary hardlink copy directory
rm -r ~/tmp/hrdlnks/
Side Notes:
- if you create a new file in this "hardlink" temporary directory you will not be creating it in the "original"/"mirrored" directory
- you will need to copy it manually before removing the temporary hardlink directory
- if new files get created in the "original" directory after you have made your hardlink copy, they will not exist in the hardlink copy
- you will need to create a new hardlink copy
- I would recommend to just delete the temporary directory once you are done modifying the files of interest.
Notes on hardlinks
- a hardlink just points to the same "file blob of data"
- if you delete the hardlink you are not deleting the "original" file
- if you delete the "original" file, the hardlink still has access to the data, when you delete all hardlinks pointing towards the data, you will not have anymore access to the data, although it will still exist untill some other file overwrites those "free" bytes
- if you change the file or directory name you are not changing the "original" names
- if you move files around in the hardlink temp directory you will not be moving anything in the "original" directory structure
