Thunderbird starts virusscan instead of the right application when opening attachments

[markusd112]

Binary package hint: thunderbird

Since upgrade from ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 thunderbird doesn't start the appropriate application when opening an attachment. Thunderbird always asks me to open it with virusscan. So I have always to save the attachment to the disk and open it via nautilus.
This happens not with all attachements, some are recognized well, so acroread or openoffice is proposed for opening it.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Nov 23 12:05:20 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: mozilla-thunderbird (not installed)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de_DE.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-386
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-386 i686

[markusd112 (markusd112)]

I have now deinstalled clamav and after that the problem doesn't occur any longer. Reinstalling clamav brings back the problem.

Is it a bug or a feature? I think it's a good idea to start a virusscan first and after that to appropriate application. But in the moment you don't have a chance to open the application. Clamavtk starts, the virus scan is done and that's all. Then you can save the file to disk, start nautilus and open it. That's very circuitous...

There could be two solutions: when opening an attachment from thunderbird the virusscan should be done in the background and then opening the appropriate application (that's would be my preference).
Or: in Clamavtk there should be a button "Open file", which starts the appropriate application and opens the scanned file.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Jakob we need more info from you. Please run the following command:
apport-collect 487057

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I think you want clamtk. Clamav doesn't have any GUI compoments.

[Dave M (dave-nerd)]

Here's the thing with the filetype associations - if I change ClamTk to be associated with ALL filetypes, it will - and I get nasty emails over it. Not to mention, the Debian maintainer will add a patch to remove all associations except for MS filetypes, so it probably won't reach most Ubuntu users anyway. If I keep ClamTk as it has been since 4.16 - associated with only MS filetypes - there are bug reports on it for not being associated with all filetypes. :)

What we need is a way to set user-controlled filetype associations and store them in user's home directories (under ~/.local or something).

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

In the meantime there is also nautilus-clamscan in the repository for doing virus scan on demand. I simply uninstalled clamtk.

[Dave M (dave-nerd)]

All mime-type associations have been removed as of 4.29, so the problem should no longer occur.

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

No, problem still occurs. - and although I uninstalled Clamtk I now notice, that it always wants to download the pdf.

[Dave M (dave-nerd)]

Are you saying you uninstalled clamtk and there's still a right-click action trying to send the pdf to clamtk?

Can you run "sudo update-desktop-database" from a terminal window, or at least log out and log back in and see if the problem still persists? It's possible that the uninstall process isn't updating the mimetype associations.

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

No, virus scanning entry gone, but "open" option not returned - can only save locally and then open via double-click from within Nautilus.

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

Oh BTW: sudo update-desktop-database and relogin did not help - will try reboot and let you know.

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

Even reboot did not help, but I made further tests and found out something:

It depends on the PDF. PDFs created with Open Office are recognized perfectly, but PDFs created on Windows with different PDF creation tool might not work (need to find out, if general issue with Windows PDFs or not). I examined mime type and both seem to be application/pdf (at least that is what Nautilus says). - It also could be, that it is not the PDF file itself, but how it is packed to the email. All emails with such PDFs were sent by Outlook (which is a very good sample of crap gotten widely adopted).

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

For my last comments I appologize - as this in reality turned out to be a different bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/593459

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

The clamtk part of this is fixed.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to review all reported bugs in a timely manner. You reported this bug some time ago and there have been many changes in Ubuntu and Thunderbird since that time.

Do you still see a problem related to the one that was reported using currently supported versions of Thunderbird and Ubuntu?

Thank you for helping make Ubuntu better.

Paul White
[Ubuntu Bug Squad]

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thunderbird task did not expire due bug watch
No reply to comment #15 or other comments from those affected since 2010
So closing as fixed

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

Yes, looks indeed fixed in the meantime.