Nautilus not working properly due to missing PATH in dbus

abmantis · January 25, 2024, 11:24pm

I am using Hyprland with wofi to run apps.
When I open nautilus using wofi, it cannot find any app to open files (except VLC, for some reason I have no clue why). If I go to the “Open With…” dialog, only VLC is present.

Apparently, this is due to the PATH env var missing in dbus, since if I do dbus-update-activation-environment PATH then nautilus works as expected.

Is there something that I am missing to make this work without having to explicitly import PATH?

jtojnar · January 26, 2024, 9:00am

Your desktop environment should run that program, otherwise D-Bus activated applications will not have access to your session environment.

For window managers, the display manager session script does it:

github.com

NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/57de71a6f09d9ace36cf453d27450f3cb4bb9fd3/nixos/modules/services/x11/display-managers/default.nix#L472


      
              # `services.xserver.displayManager.session` entries. Called from
              # `sessionWrapper`.
          
          
    # Start the window manager.
              ${wm.start}
          
          
    # Start the desktop manager.
              ${dm.start}
          
          
    ${optionalString cfg.updateDbusEnvironment ''
                ${lib.getBin pkgs.dbus}/bin/dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd --all
              ''}
          
          
    test -n "$waitPID" && wait "$waitPID"
          
          
    ${fakeSession "stop"}
          
          
    exit 0
            '';
          in
            # We will generate every possible pair of WM and DM.

But if you do not use a display manager, you will need to call it yourself.

jtojnar · January 26, 2024, 9:07am

Actually, it looks like Hyprland does call dbus-update-activation-environment, it just does not include PATH and XDG_DATA_DIRS, which are necessary for application launchers and file associations.

There is an upstream issue about that: Import environment variables into systemd in NixOS modules · Issue #2800 · hyprwm/Hyprland · GitHub Also Xwayland applications don't startup when launching them from `nautilus` · Issue #2965 · hyprwm/Hyprland · GitHub

abmantis · January 27, 2024, 11:40pm

Thanks! I don’t know how I missed those two issues.
I was a bit afraid that passing PATH to dbus was not the proper thing to do, but if it is ok, then I’ll just do that. Thanks!

abmantis · January 27, 2024, 11:44pm

Actually, I just noticed that you said “But if you do not use a display manager, you will need to call it yourself.”.
I do use GDM, so it should do that for me?

jtojnar · January 28, 2024, 12:04am

I meant that if your desktop environment does not do it and you use display manager, you can use services.xserver.updateDbusEnvironment NixOS option to have the session script generated by the display manager NixOS module do it for you.

abmantis · January 28, 2024, 12:34am

Ohh, right! That works!
Thanks a lot once again.

teto · April 11, 2025, 10:36am

I have sway configured via Home-manager.
I’ve tried running dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd --all from a terminal and then start nautilus, it can’t find much mimetypes mappings.
What puzzles me is that gio launched from a terminal seems to find libreoffice (writer.desktop)

$ gio mime application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text  # for .odt documents
Application par défaut pour « application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text » : org.gnome.BrowserConnector.desktop
Applications inscrites :
	org.gnome.BrowserConnector.desktop
	writer.desktop
	xarchiver.desktop
	org.gnome.FileRoller.desktop
	org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop
Applications recommandées :
	org.gnome.BrowserConnector.desktop
	writer.desktop
	xarchiver.desktop

but in nautilus it can’t find any application to open it, writer.desktop doesn’t even appear in the list of applications I can start manually

abmantis · April 17, 2025, 4:36pm

Have you tried the solution here ?

JimJ92120 · April 17, 2025, 7:54pm

Also mentioned here in hyprland doc with home-manager: Hyprland on Home Manager – Hyprland Wiki

wayland.windowManager.hyprland.systemd.variables = ["--all"];