Bad permissions while Appimage run/mount

Developers
1

While running an AppImage, it’s beeing mounted (without possibility for the user to select where it should be mounted) into the “/tmp” directory.

It’s beeing either mounted as read-only or with incorrect permissions, that even as the root user fail to change the ownership, permissions or to change anything in the mounted Appimage

Enviroment:

  • System: Debian 10 (64-bit Linux)

If other informations are required then please ask because I don’t know what is needed :wink:

2

AppImages are always read-only because they use SquashFS. If you’re trying to modify the contents, you need to use ‘–appimage-extract’ on the AppImage in question. It’ll give you a directory called ‘squashfs-root’ in there you can modify the contents, then rebuild the AppImage with appimagetool (you have to download that though).

3

I have few ideas related to this issue about with I would like to hear your opinion. How about doing some changes:

  1. add option to enter the directory where the AppImage should be extracted when using the “–appimage-extract” parameter

  2. add option to enter where the AppImage “mounted” files will be placed

ad. 2:

it would be a great idea if the AppImage would be mounted instead of default location (/tmp) either in a sub-folder of the AppImage or in a user given location. This would easy up the usage because there won’t be need to search the application in a (usually) tone of temporary files to use it

4

What does a user need to search there? A user needs to just double-click the AppImage to launch the application inside it.

5

Hello. The proposal was thought out to fix eventual permission issues and allow that all configuration files, extensions, makro’s, etc could be stored in one folder, without it be split on whole disk. This way the whole program will be more portable qnd be run from any place.

6

You might be interested in --appimage-portable-home. Check it out!

https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/portable-mode.html

1 Like
7

Thanks. That’s a very usefull informations.

Shame only that that the description of the “portable mode” is not complete - there are missing for example the settings to put into the “*.config” file, that the solution could be a “out-of-box” solution :wink:

8

There are no “settings” to put into a config “file”.

You just run ./Your.AppImage --appimage-portable-home once, and from thereon, what would normally go to $HOME will now go to ./Your.AppImage.home instead.

You can also create that folder by hand. Then you don’t even need the command line once.