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After updating to fedora 33 I cannot open links from a pdf file which are pointing into my local file system.

** (evince:4693): WARNING **: 20:22:47.413: Security alert: this document has been prevented from opening the file “some/file/name.jpg"

The links in the file are valid and pointing to the correct file. The file is created via pdflatex and is intended to be a link list for my personal use.

How can I allow the access in general or for that special file?

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    Can you post your update and the solution as answer? Commented Oct 4, 2021 at 8:40
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    Please don't post answers as edits to your question. Someone else has taken your edit and posted it as an answer, which is a good thing because that way the question can be marked as answered. Yes, they should have provided clear attribution, but that has now been done. If you want to post an answer yourself, that would be great! But please post it as an answer and not an edit. Feel free to flag the other answer for removal after you post your own. Commented Mar 12, 2022 at 10:45
  • I'll be happy to remove my answer if the original poster wishes to post his. Commented Mar 16, 2022 at 14:48

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This is NOT related to a security alert as the warning tells us! The feature "open a external link" is simply intentional removed from evince with the last changes they did. The given warning is totally wrong, it is definitely not that the "this document...", it is simply that they drop the code for open links.

I found the broken patch: e85a79a355ff40149669611812695aad87a1af8d

But it is impossible to build evince on my host, as building is related to gnome-builder. The gnome builder works but the build fails with millions of error messages. In a short: No chance to build gnome tools on a standard installation without being an exorcist. Why we don't have configure/make/install??? This gnome-builder gui is a nightmare!

OK, searching for other pdf viewers:

  • okular: This now displays external linked images inside the tool itself. This may help, but not in my case as I link to the first picture I search for.

  • firefox: did not open external links from pdf

  • gv: did not help as it misses so many features, it simply can't link to file local refs

  • mupdf: Yepp! This is the only tool which is currently working for me!

All this ends up for me in the consequence that I have to stop using pdf at all. If opening a link is blamed as a security issue, we should stop using html :-) I have no idea why such changes have a chance to be committed. Ok, our company now moves to html for all documents. That`s make the world not simpler nor saver.

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    I feel the same. The patch removing PDF standard links has broken the experience of using Latex Beamer for my presentations. twitter.com/ax5/status/1631433094296117249 Commented Mar 2, 2023 at 23:18
  • This is stressful. I have to give my lecture tomorrow morning and Ubuntu's "Document Viewer" stopped following links just today... Commented May 29, 2023 at 13:00
  • Not sure my and your problem have the same source but in my case I could fix it by removing an old fix : I used to use \href{run:./file.html} in my LaTeX source instead of \href{./file.html} because the second one would not work. Now it is the first one that does not work but the second one works again... Commented May 29, 2023 at 13:48
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The OP provided an answer as part of their question, so I am reproducing it below:

This is NOT related to a security alert as the warning tells us! The feature "open a external link" is simply intentional removed from evince with the last changes they did. The given warning is totally wrong, it is definitely not that the "this document...", it is simply that they drop the code for open links.

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I had this issue with evince also, on reading this discovered that the app Papers, handles links fine: https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/Papers/

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  • Thanks for the info. But I have no idea how to install "papers". It looks like something that is not a program but an extension to something I have no idea about. I was not able to find a program "papers" which I can install. The gnome stuff is fully curious to me ( and broken also ) Commented Dec 24, 2024 at 15:02
  • check out flathub.org/setup for your particular setup - before installing the papers app itself Commented Dec 25, 2024 at 16:04
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    Oh no! Next generation of chaos! If I see it right, it will install all the deps also in a container like thing. For a application which needs maybe 2MB it will install hundreds of MBs for nearly nothing. No, sorry! I will have it as a normal rpm. No need to install a complete OS for every app. Commented Dec 26, 2024 at 10:17
  • in both evince and Papers, I get the exact same error: Security alert: this document has been prevented from opening the file "path/to/file.mp4". I know that the path is correct because it opens fine on both mac os and windows (with acrobat reader) Commented Jan 9 at 1:38

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