gnome-open keeps re-running itself if set as default opening application

[Karol Stasiak]

Binary package hint: libgnome2-0

Tested on: Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 with GNOME 2.24.1
Package version affected: 2.24.1

If somebody sets gnome-open as a default application for opening certain filetype and then double-clicks one of those files, gnome-open keeps executing itself over and over, using all CPU power.

Steps to reproduce:
- right click on any file, choose Properties -> Opening -> Add -> type "gnome-open" -> OK -> select "gnome-open" -> OK
- double click on the file
- notice 100% CPU load
- execute " killall gnome-open " in terminal to terminate this infinite loop

Possible solutions:
- ignore, as it is not a severe problem
- warn user whilst adding a program in the preferences window with an alert: "This program cannot be set for opening files"
- make gnome-open check if it is to run itself and display "Choose application to open this file" window instead

[Simon Woolf (semw)]

Confirmed. I've just been hit by this myself (on Intrepid).

It took about half an hour to work out that it was gnome-open, because neither top, nor htop, nor gnome-system-monitor were any use at all. All three showed 100% total CPU usage, but none showed what was using it: adding up the CPU totals for all processes usually came to about 10%. gnome-open, on recausing the problem and checking now, was right at the bottom, shown using up no CPU whatsoever.

I only finally worked out that it was gnome-open using atop: using the 'c' (show command line) option showed a large number of "<gnome-open>" lines. The brackets indicate that the process "finished during the last interval" apparently: it was restarting itself over and over, but only one copy was ever running at one time; hence why top and htop only showed one.

So how did this happen? At some point, I think I set Opera to display shell scripts with "gnome-open", in the belief that this would just cause it to open them with Gnome's default handler (which at the time was gedit). Apparently that must have caused gnome-open to be set as the default file handler for scripts.