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Accepted
Walter
Asked: 2020-02-25 07:20:40 +0800 CST

Unable to launch evince

  • 772

When launching evince, I get this error:

EvinceDocument-WARNING **: 10:14:16.337: Error opening directory “/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/evince/4/backends”: Permission denied

I have already put evince in complain mode, so I think:

aa-complain /usr/bin/evince

systemctl restart apparmor

Status shows evince is in complain mode:

apparmor_status

22 profiles are in complain mode.
   /usr/bin/evince

I am running Ubuntu with overlayfs root. I have also tried stopping apparmor altogether.

I can do ls -al /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/evince/4/backends and see the files just fine. If I run strace evince, I see the exact same output, that is cannot open that directory.

  1. How can I fix that?
  2. If it is a fatal error, why is evince logging it as a warning?
  3. If apparmor is permitting access (as evidence in dmesg output (ALLOW)), why is it still complaining?

EDIT: #1

1. Ubuntu 19.10 Server as a base (not as a install, nor a debootstrap, but close to a debootstrap)
2. xorg + i3 tiling wm installed
3. no virtualization
4. most other applications work as expected
evince apparmor overlayfs

2 Answers

  1. I would recommend to reinstall the Evince packages first with

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall libevdocument3-4 evince-hwp evince

    and then retry.

    • 0
  2. Best Answer

    I solved this by:

    1. temporarily disabling the evince apparmor profile: apparmor_parser -R /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.evince
    2. permanently disabling the evince apparmor profile by symlinking /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.evince via /etc/apparmor.d/disable
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