Bug#258564: nautilus: Nautilus' file type handling is very broken

[Kevin Brown]

Package: nautilus
Version: 2.6.3b-1
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable


After upgrading nautilus from 2.6.3-2 (indirectly, this happened as a
result of upgrading gnome from version 55 to version 56, which happened
as a result of an unstable -> unstable dist-upgrade), it no longer seems
to properly interpret the file type of any file.  From the looks of it,
nautilus appears to be doing a basic file type check only.

Take a PDF file, for instance.  If you open Applications -> Desktop
Preferences -> Advanced -> File Types and Programs, then expand Documents,
then expand Published Materials, you should find a "PDF document" entry.
If you edit it you'll find that it is supposed to match files that have
the pdf extension, and that its MIME type is application/pdf.

But nautilus doesn't seem to make use of any of that.  If you examine
the properties of a .pdf file from within nautilus, it says that the
type is "Unknown type" and the MIME type is "application/octet-stream".

That's just an example.  This problem also breaks .desktop files and
.drive files, and thus the "Computer" folder as well as
"applications:///".  And so, drive mounting no longer works in Nautilus.

In short, Nautilus is now essentially completely useless, and thus I'm
filing this bug as "grave".


Nautilus 2.6.3-2 worked, but downgrading back to that version doesn't
actually solve this problem, so the actual breakage is somewhere else.
But because I don't know which package broke (neither apt-get nor dpkg
seem to retain a package installation history that I can refer to) and
because the breakage is most visible in nautilus, I'm filing this
against nautilus.


- Kevin Brown
  kevin@sysexperts.com


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.7-1-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages nautilus depends on:
ii  capplets              1:2.6.1-9          configuration applets for GNOME 2 
ii  libart-2.0-2          2.3.16-5           Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0           1.6.1-2            The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libaudiofile0         1:0.2.3-1.ximian.2 Library to handle various audio fi
ii  libbonobo2-0          2.6.2-4            Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0        2.6.1-1            The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                 2.3.2.ds1-13       GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libeel2-2             2.6.2-1            Eazel Extensions Library (for GNOM
ii  libesd0               0.2.29-1           Enlightened Sound Daemon - Shared 
ii  libexif10             0.6.9-1            The EXIF library allows you to par
ii  libgail-common        1.4.1-1            GNOME Accessibility Implementation
ii  libgail17             1.4.1-1            GNOME Accessibility Implementation
ii  libgconf2-4           2.6.2-1            GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0           1:2.4.0-1          Library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0          2.4.2-1            The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-desktop-2    2.6.1-2            Utility library for loading .deskt
ii  libgnome2-0           2.6.1-8            The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0     2.6.1.1-2          A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgnomeui-0          2.6.1.1-3          The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0        2.6.1.1-3          The GNOME virtual file-system libr
ii  libgtk2.0-0           2.4.3-3            The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libice6               4.3.0.dfsg.1-6     Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libjpeg62             6b-9               The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG 
ii  libnautilus2-2        2.6.3b-1           libraries for nautilus components 
ii  liborbit2             1:2.10.2-1.1       libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii  libpango1.0-0         1.4.0-4            Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpopt0              1.7-4              lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  librsvg2-2            2.7.2-2            SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libsm6                4.3.0.dfsg.1-6     X Window System Session Management
ii  libstartup-notificati 0.6-2              library for program launch feedbac
ii  libx11-6              4.3.0.dfsg.1-6     X Window System protocol client li
ii  libxml2               2.6.10-3           GNOME XML library
ii  nautilus-data         2.6.3b-1           data files for nautilus
ii  shared-mime-info      0.14-1.1           FreeDesktop.org shared MIME databa
ii  xlibs                 4.3.0.dfsg.1-6     X Window System client libraries m
ii  zlib1g                1:1.2.1.1-3        compression library - runtime

-- no debconf information