Inkscape will not open SVG files

[Alex Valavanis]

Reported by: Sérgio Cipolla <email address hidden>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:33:02 UTC
Severity: important
Found in version inkscape/0.48.1-2.1

I installed Inkscape and it simply can't open any SVG files, not even its own built-in examples.
For example, running it from the terminal to open an SVG file a pop-up shows up with
'Failed to load the requested file xxxx.svg'
Then clicking on 'Close' for the message opens inkscape in a 'New document' window.

/usr/share/inkscape/examples$ inkscape filters.svg

(inkscape:2472): libgnomevfs-CRITICAL **: gnome_vfs_uri_is_local: assertion `uri != NULL' failed

** (inkscape:2472): WARNING **: Invalid URI

** (inkscape:2472): WARNING **: Error: Could not open file 'filters.svg' with VFS

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (150, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages inkscape depends on:
ii libaspell15 0.60.7~20110707-1 GNU Aspell spell-checker runtime l
ii libatk1.0-0 2.0.1-2 ATK accessibility toolkit
ii libatkmm-1.6-1 2.22.5-1 C++ wrappers for ATK accessibility
ii libc6 2.13-16 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii libcairo2 1.10.2-6.1 The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii libcairomm-1.0-1 1.10.0-1 C++ wrappers for Cairo (shared lib
ii libfontconfig1 2.8.0-3 generic font configuration library
ii libfreetype6 2.4.6-1 FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii libgc1c2 1:7.1-8 conservative garbage collector for
ii libgcc1 1:4.6.1-6 GCC support library
ii libgconf2-4 2.32.4-1 GNOME configuration database syste
ii libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 2.23.5-3 GDK Pixbuf library
ii libglib2.0-0 2.28.6-2 GLib library of C routines
ii libglibmm-2.4-1c2a 2.28.1-1 C++ wrapper for the GLib toolkit (
ii libgnomevfs2-0 1:2.24.4-1 GNOME Virtual File System (runtime
ii libgomp1 4.6.1-6 GCC OpenMP (GOMP) support library
ii libgsl0ldbl 1.15+dfsg-1 GNU Scientific Library (GSL) -- li
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.24.5-4 GTK+ graphical user interface libr
ii libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a 1:2.24.0-1 C++ wrappers for GTK+ (shared libr
ii libgtkspell0 2.0.16-1 a spell-checking addon for GTK's T
ii liblcms1 1.19.dfsg-1 Little CMS color management librar
ii libmagick++4 8:6.6.9.7-5 object-oriented C++ interface to I
ii libmagickcore4 8:6.6.9.7-5 low-level image manipulation libra
ii libpango1.0-0 1.28.4-2 Layout and rendering of internatio
ii libpangomm-1.4-1 2.28.2-1 C++ Wrapper for pango (shared libr
ii libpng12-0 1.2.46-3 PNG library - runtime
ii libpoppler-glib6 0.16.7-2 PDF rendering library (GLib-based
ii libpoppler13 0.16.7-2 PDF rendering library
ii libpopt0 1.16-1 lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii libsigc++-2.0-0c2a 2.2.9-1 type-safe Signal Framework for C++
ii libstdc++6 4.6.1-6 GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii libwpd-0.9-9 0.9.2-1 Library for handling WordPerfect d
ii libwpg-0.2-2 0.2.0-4 WordPerfect graphics import/conver
ii libx11-6 2:1.4.4-1 X11 client-side library
ii libxml2 2.7.8.dfsg-4 GNOME XML library
ii libxslt1.1 1.1.26-8 XSLT 1.0 processing library - runt
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages inkscape recommends:
ii aspell 0.60.7~20110707-1 GNU Aspell spell-checker
ii imagemagick 8:6.6.9.7-5 image manipulation programs
ii libwmf-bin 0.2.8.4-8.1 Windows metafile conversion tools
ii perlmagick 8:6.6.9.7-5 Perl interface to the ImageMagick
ii pstoedit 3.51~pre1-1 PostScript and PDF files to editab

Versions of packages inkscape suggests:
pn dia | dia-gnome <none> (no description available)
ii libgnomevfs2-extra 1:2.24.4-1 GNOME Virtual File System (extra m
pn libsvg-perl <none> (no description available)
pn libxml-xql-perl <none> (no description available)
ii python 2.6.7-2 interactive high-level object-orie
pn python-lxml <none> (no description available)
ii python-numpy 1:1.5.1-2+b1 Numerical Python adds a fast array
pn python-uniconvertor <none> (no description available)
pn ruby <none> (no description available)
pn skencil <none> (no description available)

-- no debconf information

[Alex Valavanis (valavanisalex)]

@upstream - Any thoughts on this? Its severity has been bumped to "grave" in the Debian tracker.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Same as or similar to an older debian bug reported for Inkscape 0.47?
567045 - inkscape: SAVE function corrupted : can't open any SVG files that inkscape iteself writes
<http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=567045>

It seems that the older report was actually a problem with the gnome-vfs package, not Inkscape:
> | The problem is, was :
> |
> | The gnome-vfs-2.0 directory couldn't be accessed

[Josh Triplett (joshtriplett)]

This problem doesn't relate to the older bug, but the mention of gnome-vfs in both that bug and the error message inkscape prints helped me track down the bug. As a workaround for http://bugs.debian.org/626076 , which causes Firefox to crash, I had commented out the line "file: file" in /etc/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/default-modules.conf . Uncommenting that line fixes this problem, though it disables the workaround for the other gnome-vfs bug.

[Martin Owens (doctormo)]

I think this is likely to be a gnome-vfs or some other operating system bug. There are no sustained reports of this corruption in new Inkscape releases and we should close this report.

[xennex82 (xennex82)]

Euhm, I have Inkscape installed on and from Kubuntu 16.04.

It won't open SVG files.

That it itself created using the Windows version.

Based on the commentary above I searched for the file mentioned which didn't exist but this one did:

/etc/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/extra-modules.conf

I opened it and added the line:

file: file

Now suddenly it works!