Running my desired file manager from within the web browser

Question

I would like to run Nemo instead of Xfce's default file browser, in my browser.

Per Clean way to run proper file manager from Firefox on Linux I tried to do:

$ mkdir --parents ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/
$ ln --symbolic /usr/share/dbus-1/services/nemo.FileManager1.service ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.FileManager1.service

To test to see which file manager opens, I ran:

$ dbus-send --dest=org.freedesktop.FileManager1 --type=method_call /org/freedesktop/FileManager1 org.freedesktop.FileManager1.ShowItems array:string:"file:///home/" string:""

I then rebooted, but nothing changed. I even copied a few more service files and updated their Name field:

• /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.FileManager.service
• /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.Thunar.FileManager1.service

Again nothing changed and Thunar still opens. It seems like my settings are entirely being ignored.

Any ideas on whats going on, or how can I debug this issue?

Answer 1

I looked at /usr/share/dbus-1/session.conf, which I didn't modify. This contains <standard_session_servicedirs />. Per dbus-daemon this means ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/ is included and should take preference over services in /usr/share/dbus-1/services/.

There was nothing relevant in dbus.service logs.

Some googling and Changing DBUS FileManager1 to Krusader says:

There's no solution for auto-launching. If you want a per-desktop override of a given service, start it early. So your question is to your desktop system and to your application in particular: have them launch early and claim the org.freedesktop.FileManager1 service name. And don't quit.

Indeed, looking at my running D-Bus services, there's already a org.freedesktop.FileManager1.

import dbus

session_bus = dbus.bus.BusConnection('unix:path=/run/user/1000/bus')
for service in session_bus.list_names():
    print(service)

Looking at my processes, I have /usr/bin/Thunar --gapplication-service running.

This was started by /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.Thunar.FileManager1.service with the contents:

[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.freedesktop.FileManager1
Exec=/usr/bin/Thunar --gapplication-service
SystemdService=thunar.service

Upon killing this process, my config in ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.FileManager1.service works.

There is still no way to disable D-Bus services per Need to provide standardized way to disable services started by dbus (#70) · Issues · dbus / dbus · GitLab.

So in order to fix this issue, in addition to including ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.FileManager1.service, I just killed any Thunar processes on login. Now Nemo shows up when I open it in my web browser.