Re: Re: Able to write to read-only pdf files
> > > > On 14.08.21 20:19, Adriano Vilela Barbosa wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 12:54, bruno zanetti <bzanetti00@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Il giorno sab 14 ago 2021 alle ore 15:39 Adriano Vilela Barbosa
> > > > <adriano.vilela@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > Yesterday I came across a very weird behavior while annotating a pdf
> > > > file in Okular. Long story short: I opened a read-only pdf file
> > > > (permissions: 400), inserted some comments and hit the save button. At
> > > > this point, I thought I had been working on a write-enabled copy of
> > > > the file. After a while, I realized that I was actually working on the
> > > > read-only version of the file, that somehow got saved to disk when I
> > > > hit the save icon. Okular was not only able to save the file to disk,
> > > > but the file permissions were changed to 644.
> > > >
> > > > I initially thought this was an Okular problem. However, after some
> > > > more testing, I was able to reproduce the problem with Xournal. This
> > > > makes me think that the problem is not with Okular or Xournal, but
> > > > with some common library used by both of these packages (maybe
> > > > libpoppler?).
> > > >
> > > > Has anybody had this problem? Can anybody reproduce it?
> > > >
> > > > I'm using Debian testing.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks a lot,
> > > >
> > > > Adriano
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi Adriano,
> > > the read-only permission on the pdf file just prevents it's contents to be changed.
> > > It still can be deleted if the directory it belongs to is not write protected.
> > > Editor programs usually do not directly change the contents of a file but rather
> > > save them to a temporary new one (with default permissions), delete the original
> > > and then rename the new file replacing the original one. I don't know if Okular
> > > works this way, but I think it quite likely does.
> > >
> > > Have a good release day!
> > >
> > > Bruno
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi Bruno,
> >
> > Thanks for your reply.
> >
> > Indeed, what you describe may be what's happening. If I change the
> > permissions of the directory where the file is to read-only, I get an
> > error message when trying to save the file. The error message says the
> > file could not be saved (error: access denied), and also says that it
> > could not write to file.pdf.part (this .part file must be temporary
> > file you mentioned).
> >
> > I understand this mechanism, but I think this is quite controversial
> > and problematic. I mean, as an end user I don't care what the editor
> > is doing behind the scenes; it just shouldn't be able to modify a file
> > marked as read-only.
> >
> > This is the first time I came across this behavior. No text editor I
> > ever used does this; LibreOffice doesn't do it either (rather, it
> > shows a message saying the document is open in read-only and shows an
> > "Edit Document" button, which allows you to edit the document and then
> > save it under a different name).
> >
> > The question is: should I file a bug report somewhere? I really don't
> > want editors overwriting my read-only documents...
> >
> > Thanks again,
> >
> > Adriano
>
>
> Adriano, I am simply a user, not a developer. I fully agree with you and suggest to file a
> bug report. In 30 years computing I have never noticed and assumed something like this, and
> although the explanation of Bruno sounds reasonable, the behavior is not reasonable at all
> from the point of view of a user! Until you and Bruno mentioned this behavior, I would not
> even have expected this to be possible by the filesystem's policy and initially reading
> your original post suspect this even to be a filesystem bug! If data represented by a file
> name is marked read-only on the filesystem level, then for this file name the data should
> not be replaceable. If this technically would be possible, like Bruno suspects it, then
> this still doesn't make it right from the users point of view.
>
>
> ---
> Just my thoughts!
> Marco.
Hi Marco,
I totally agree with you. As I said, I also have never seen this
behavior before. However, if the mechanism described by Bruno is what
is actually happening (and I think it is, because of the error message
about the .part file I got when I changed the directory permissions),
I don't see how the file system could prevent that.
I'm going to file a bug report upstream.
Thanks,
Adriano
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