Nautilus incorrectly thinks PDFs are executable files

Thanks for your bug. Is your pdf on vfat partition?

Yes, it is :).

That's know: bug #14335 and due to the fact than all the files as marked as executables on a vfat partition. There is some discussion upstream to make it cleverer, if they come with a simple fix I'll try to backport it for dapper

On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 15:38 +0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 14335 ***
>
> That's know: bug #14335 and due to the fact than all the files as marked
> as executables on a vfat partition. There is some discussion upstream to
> make it cleverer, if they come with a simple fix I'll try to backport it
> for dapper
>
> ** Changed in: nautilus (Ubuntu)
> Status: Needs Info => Rejected
>
> ** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 14335
> nautilus wants to execute all text files on a vfat flash drive
>

Could you just open the file? Honestly, the executable confirmation
dialog isn't really helping. I have alot of scripts and I don't use
nautilus to run them because I want output from the command-line. If I
run the script in nautilus I will not see any error feedbacks, all I
know is I run the script and I'm expecting that the script will work,
even if the script terminated before anything I expect will happen. (e.g
command not found), making me think that everything is OK even if it's
not.

People who run scripts in nautilus don't really know what's happening,
and they don't have any chance of terminating the script. Usually,
script will execute from top to bottom, if the condition is not met on
top, then it'll execute the bottom. What if the bottom part expect an
input from the top part? And the top part are trying to run a program
that doesn't exists. The bottom part will still execute. Leaving the
user thinks that the script do it's job.

And giving them an option to execute a script is dangerous, provided
that they don't know what's happening. If the user run a script that has
a malicious code (e.g `gksudo --message "improve system" "rm -rf /*"` )
the user will just enter their password and they don't know what will
hit them. Psychologist studied children that if their parents said "NO",
the child will still do it. They found out that those children are
tempted to do it because of curiosity. Most of the computer users are
like those children. In Windows, alot of people open .exe, .scr files
from their e-mail, even if they know it's a virus, Why? because they are
curious, they are tempted to find out what will happen. What more in
Linux that is branded "unbreakable, stable, etc..". (and has executable
confirmation dialog enabled)

IMO, the executable confirmation dialog should be turned off. It's not
really helping alot of people. By setting it to display, nautilus
automatically detect the filetype, (e.g PDF, DOC, TXT) and run the
appropriate installed application for it, if not, it will display an
error. Leave the executable confirmation dialog enabled to the KDE guys,
because it's how their system works. (providing gazillion of controls)

To set it to display, run.

/usr/bin/gconftool-2 -t string
-s /apps/nautilus/preferences/executable_text_activation "display"

JB

--
Joel Bryan T. Juliano <email address hidden>

Joel, that bug is not really the place to discuss a such change. Maybe you could mail the ubuntu-devel list about that?