Re: Able to write to read-only pdf files
On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 18:05, Adriano Vilela Barbosa
<adriano.vilela@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 at 16:49, bruno zanetti <bzanetti00@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Il giorno sab 14 ago 2021 alle ore 20:20 Adriano Vilela Barbosa <adriano.vilela@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> >>
> >> 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
> >
> >
> > Well, some editors take care of not overwriting read-only files, some others (like kate, kwite) don't...
> > But I second your reasoning, the right behaviour IMHO would be to respect the file permissions, regardless of the mechanism of the underlying filesystem.
> > I'd suggest you report the issue on bugs.kde.org since it doesn't seem to be a debian specific issue.
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Bruno
> >
>
> Hi Bruno,
>
> At least on my system (Debian Testing), I can't overwrite a read-only
> file with either kwrite or kate.
>
> I'm going to report a bug upstream and post the link here.
>
> Adriano
Here's the bug report I filed:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440986
Adriano
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