Firetools GUI visual representation suddenly changed

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

Hi all,

I stumbled over a curious problem yesterday, but in the meantime it´s solved (the problem resolved itself somehow).

Still: I´m curious what might have been going on.

Out of nowhere (at least it seems that way) the GUI representation of firetools (Graphical tools collection for Firejail security sandbox) changed
in a visual way.

Here´s what it normally looks like:

But suddenly some of the icons had a different visual representation. They still pointed to the correct applications though.
It´s hard to describe with words and I didn´t think of taking a screenshot at the time.

Plus: the fonts had changed too. The characters were depicted a little smaller than usual.

The strangest thing was:

I got the changed representation of firetools only when double-clicking on the respective desktop icon:

When starting it via the terminal with the command firetools it was back to its old self again.

So I tried to look it up in the logs with the help of lnav. Looking for the search word firetools I came across these entries:

│Jul 13 18:31:21 rosika-Lenovo-H520e Thunar[94779]: Das Arbeitsverzeichnis »/home/rosika/[Invalid UTF-8]« ist nicht vorhanden: Es wird beim Starten von »firetools« nicht verwendet.        │
│Jul 13 18:31:21 rosika-Lenovo-H520e Thunar[97084]: exiting...      

This would be:

"The working directory “/home/rosika/[Invalid UTF-8]” does not exist: it is not used when starting “firetools”.

Strange.

Well, I shut down my system, as it was already bed time for me.
When starting anew today everything seems to back to normal again.

No idea what was going on yesterday.

Does anyone have a clue?

Thanks and many greetings from Rosika

P.S.:

I remember having fiddled with “ImportExportTools NG” in thunderbird before it all happened.
I had changed the “character set for export in text and csv format” a few times but finally switched back to UTF-8 again.
I wonder whether this had something to do with it…
… especially in view of the fact that thunderbird was started via the firetools app.

[nevj (Neville Jackson)]

@Rosika

I got the changed representation of firetools only when double-clicking on the respective desktop icon:

Why would the icon differ from the terminal command?
I dont know how to do this, but can you find out what command the icon runs?. It may run it with different options.

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

Hi Neville,

@nevj

Why would the icon differ from the terminal command?

No idea. It baffled me too.

But aren´t the desktop itself (and thus the icons placed on it) and thunar part of the desktop environment?
And aren´t they therefore somehow intertwined with respect to their functionality?

I´m not totally sure of that.

But taking into consideration what lnav tells me, there seem to be thunar involved in the matter.

@Rosika

Thunar[94779]: "The working directory “/home/rosika/[Invalid UTF-8]” does not exist: it is not used when starting “firetools”.

Starting firetools from the terminal seems to be different then.

Just a guess.

Cheers from Rosika

[nevj (Neville Jackson)]

@Rosika

But aren´t the desktop itself (and thus the icons placed on it) and thunar part of the desktop environment?

Yes.
When you click on the icon, it must run some command or script. Where is it? It must be in a file somewhere?

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

@nevj :

Yes, Neville, of course you´re right.

Here´s the configuration of the desktop icon:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Firetools
Comment=Firejail Tools and Stats
Exec=firetools
Icon=firetools
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Qt;System;Security;
Keywords=jail;security;seccomp;

So Exec=firetools seems to be the same as typing firetools in the terminal, right?

There should be no difference with regard to its behaviour.

Cheers from Rosika

[nevj (Neville Jackson)]

@Rosika

So Exec=firetools seems to be the same as typing firetools in the terminal, right?

Yes, I am afraid you are right.
The command is the same
Lets give that idea away

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

@nevj :

thanks for the confirmation, Neville.

Well, as I said in the beginning the problem isn´t there anymore and there seems no way to reproduce that weird phenomenon.
So getting to the bottom of it is not urgent by any means.

But I cannot help wondering:

@Rosika

I remember having fiddled with “ImportExportTools NG” in thunderbird before it all happened.
I had changed the “character set for export in text and csv format” a few times but finally switched back to UTF-8 again.
I wonder whether this had something to do with it…
… especially in view of the fact that thunderbird was started via the firetools app.

It would seem to be an incredibly huge coincidence.

Just think of it: Right after tampering with the add-on in thunderbird (changing UTF-8 to something else and back again) I get lnav´s message “/home/rosika/[Invalid UTF-8]” does not exist”.

Coincidence? Really? I don´t know.

Well, thanks a lot anyway, dear Neville.

All the best from Rosika