Appimage does not start

Help
1

I have placed the AppImage and icon file in an entry on my path.

ian@cyllene:/usr/local/bin$ ls -l
total 112396
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Jun 10 15:57 anki → /usr/local/share/anki/anki
-rwxrwxr-x 1 ian ian 115001540 Jul 14 13:10 Obsidian-1.6.5.AppImage
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ian ian 84344 Jul 14 13:42 obsidian-icon.png
ian@cyllene:/usr/local/bin$

When I double click on the .AppImage file above, Obsidian starts. Googled answers
suggest I need a .desktop file. The file /usr/share/applications/obsidian.desktop contains:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.6.5
Type=Application
Name=Obsidian
Comment=Markdown Notetaking App
GenericName=Text Editor
Exec=/usr/local/bin/Obsidian-1.6.5.AppImage
Icon=/usr/local/bin/obsidian-icon.png
StartupWMClass=obsidian
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/obsidian;

After a reboot, and running “xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate”, I could see the Obsidian
icon in the apps menu system, but when I clicked on it, nothing appeared to happen.

I pinned it and the only options are “New Window” and “unpin”.

What have I done wrong?

During testing, I tried to fire it off from the command line with “gtk-launch obsidian.desktop”. This complained it was not sandboxed so aborting, and requires directory
/tmp/.mount_Obsidie9CQek/chrome-sandbox to be owned by root and given an mode of 4755.

So I carefully set that up and tried again.

This time it complained that /tmp/.mount_ObsidiZGu8MV/chrome-sandbox needed to be owned by root and have a mode of 4755.

Observant readers will have noticed that these directories are different - presumably random ??? WTF is going on.

How can I get the AppImage working so I can test for the bug in Obsidian that I found, and report it and have it accepted?

Using Ubuntu 24.04, Obsidian latest (D?L this morning) FUSE installed as per instructions.

2

All seems right, and I cannot reproduce your problem on Fedora. The only thing I can think of right now, even though I do not believe it will matter, is to try changing the ownership of the executable to root:root.

To make it run natively under Wayland (if you are on Wayland), you could add the options --ozone-platform=wayland --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform,WaylandWindowDecorations, i.e.

 Exec=Obsidian-1.6.5.AppImage --ozone-platform=wayland --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform,WaylandWindowDecorations %U

Who knows (but I even think less that will be the problem) this solves it.

Ys, it is normal that there is a random string in the mounts for an appimage.

3

Thanks Vanadium,

Sadly neither of your suggestions worked.

I am curious. Obsidian will not accept bug reports on the linux platform, except for their appimage version, which is the only version without a setup file. The .desktop file is nowhere to be found.

It sounds to me like a ruse to avoid supporting the Linux versions.

Regards

Ian

4

This is a problem with your .desktop config not with the appimage itself. I am gonna move this to the help section.

Maybe there was some change in Ubuntu?
Anyway, read this
https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/troubleshooting/electron-sandboxing.html

5

The issue is likely due to the AppImage’s temporary mount point changing each time it runs.
Use --no-sandbox as an argument when launching Obsidian: ./Obsidian-<version>.AppImage --no-sandbox to bypass the sandboxing issue and test for the bug.

6
  • There is nothing wrong with the .desktop launcher, except perhaps for the “Version=” statement, which should be the version of the desktop entry specification, not that of Obsidian. However, that does not matter and the entry can be removed.
  • The issue is not due to the Appimage’s temporary mount point changing each time it run: this is normal behavior.

I cannot reproduce the issue on Fedora, but I can reproduce the issue on Ubuntu.

[4611:0715/122653.194143:FATAL:setuid_sandbox_host.cc(158)] The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly. Rather than run without sandboxing I'm aborting now. You need to make sure that /tmp/.mount_ObsidiAX72wc/chrome-sandbox is owned by root and has mode 4755.

So the issue is with some configuration of Ubuntu, either erroneously or deliberately (for safety?).

The issue appears to be related to electron apps on systems with the kernelsetting CLONE_NEWUSER disabled (source). You can workaround by disabling the sandbox with the command line option --no-sandbox (see AskUbuntu)

7

Oddly sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone gives a reply of
kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone = 1

However adding --no-sandbox to the Exec line did work.

And after all that, the bug I found in the Snap version is not in the appimage version!

Thanks to everyone for their help.

Ian

8

Which bug did you have in the snap version? Post a new bug report with that.

9

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