Bug#1006911: thunar: Cannot use IPv6 addresses in remote URLs

[Philip Chung <philipchung1995@yahoo.com>]

On Mon Mar 07 2022 21:55:40 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time), Philip 
Chung wrote:
> Package: thunar
> Version: 4.16.10-1
> Severity: normal
> Tags: ipv6
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> It seems that Thunar does not properly handle URLs to remote resources 
> that use an IPv6 address for the host.
>
> When I try to enter an FTP address like ftp://[2001:db8::1234]/ for the 
> location, I get an error saying, 'Error resolving "[2001": Name or 
> service not known.'
>
> Similarly, when I enter an SMB address with a username like 
> smb://example@[2001:db8::1234]/ I get an authentication prompt saying, 
> 'Enter password for "[2001".'
>
> Both of these suggest that the URLs are not being parsed correctly.
>
> A workaround is to mount such resources using the "gio mount" command 
> and browse them in Thunar as normal. This suggests that the wrong URL 
> parsing is happening in Thunar and not GIO or GVFS.
>
> I also get generic "connection failed" and similar errors with other 
> kinds of URLs, like smb: without a username, but I suspect the cause is 
> the same.

This appears to be caused by the fact Thunar performs some URL escaping 
before attempting to load the URL:

/* try to parse the URI text */
escaped_text = g_uri_escape_string (text, 
G_URI_RESERVED_CHARS_ALLOWED_IN_PATH, TRUE);
file_path = g_file_new_for_uri (escaped_text);
The second argument to g_uri_escape_string is a string of characters 
that should not be escaped, but this does not include [ or ]. As a 
result, the actual URL that Thunar attempts to load would be something 
like ftp://%5B2001:db8::1234%5D/ which does not work.

One solution could be to include [ and ] in that second argument 
although this may cause issues when these characters occur in other 
parts of the URL (such as the path).

Philip Chung