I'm using Xfce4.8 on arch, with xdg-utils 1.1.0rc1-3, and transmission-gtk PROBLEM: xdg-open can't open magnet links in xfce - for example: $ xdg-open magnet:?xt=urn:btih:fd638f3eafa8a346ff74c0dace96f9bab3834f85&dn=Adventures+of+Huckleberry+Finn+by+Mark+Twain%2C+A+Livrivox+Audio+B&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80 [1] 6124 [2] 6125 [3] 6126 [4] 6127 $ /usr/bin/xdg-open: line 478: firefox: command not found /usr/bin/xdg-open: line 478: mozilla: command not found /usr/bin/xdg-open: line 478: epiphany: command not found /usr/bin/xdg-open: line 478: konqueror: command not found /usr/bin/xdg-open: line 478: chromium-browser: command not found /usr/bin/xdg-open: line 478: google-chrome: command not found 304-366 /usr/bin/xdg-open: line 478: links2: command not found I've read in lots of forums about it trying to open magnets with a list of browsers instead a torrent application, causing problems with, for example, Chromium. CAUSE: Running through the function detectDE() in /usr/bin/xdg-open (lines 304 - 366): line 312 xprop is not installed as standard line 313 ditto line 325 the environment variable DESKTOP_SESSION is "Xfce4 Session", so will not match "xfce|xfce4" as given in the case statement, and DE detection will fail. This means that it's not just magnets - xdg-open misses Xfce completely. FIX: line 325 replace "xfce|xfce4)" with "xfce|xfce4|'Xfce Session')"
So, does fixing the DESKTOP_SESSION matching, fix the issue for you?
Absolutely, Chromium behaves as it should in Xfce with this fix. Although I believe the problem will still exist if there really is no DE - I'll try with Openbox next.
thanks. http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-utils/commit/?id=5be359a49d4d8dc3c5f814ab89b8422ad522d837 Fwiw, generic should work these days too, provided that apps that support magnet links include MimeTypes=...;x-scheme-handler/magnet; in their .desktop file And, if you have any pull with those who distribute xfce for you (or xfce upstream), please please tell them to stop modifying the DESKTOP_SESSION value. This seems to be the 3rd variant we've had to add and support lately. (and it's getting a little rediculous).
Many thanks for that. I tried generic by using the git version in openbox and it works fine too. For your other point, I'll send a polite link to this bug to Arch, if it's not the distro that's changing DESKTOP_SESSION, it should go upstream.
Sent straight upstream: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8557 marked trivial as it's a request
*** Bug 47833 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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