file-roller and p7zip

[wilo108]

Hi all,

I'm a relatively recent convert to LMDE from Ubuntu, where I was for many years, and I'm very happy with my new surroundings. I've had to hack a few things here and there, and I've had to return to the Ubuntu repos for the odd package which has bug fixes etc. that I need, but on the whole I've experienced far fewer difficulties than I was prepared for.

However, I've come up against a problem that's being a little more awkward, so I thought I'd try these forums and see if anyone here has a solution.

File-roller under a standard LMDE (64bit) installation seems to fail to open a great many files that are handled correctly by my Ubuntu systems. In particular, I have a collection of ISOs about which 7zip (via file-roller) complains "Can not open file as archive". When I look at the `depends` for file-roller from Wheezy, I see p7zip-full is marked as a dependency, but under Ubuntu it's optional, and not, it seems, default. Under Ubuntu file-roller seems to be depending on `isoinfo` to open and extract ISOs. (Note: when I install `p7zip-full` in a Ubuntu Lucid system, file-roller there too uses 7zip in preference to `isoinfo`, and fails accordingly with the same error).

Should `p7zip-full` be capable of opening these files (in which case there's some kind of bug in the package in the Debian and Ubuntu repos)? Is there a way I can make `file-roller` use `isoinfo` in preference? Shouldn't it be doing so anyway, if `p7zip` is failing?

Would appreciate any suggestions, help or advice.

Thanks!

wilo

[nunol]

That's a Debian package configuration (or bug) problem, there isn't much Mint can do, it uses Debian testing packages for LMDE and Mint XFCE. This problem may go away by updating.

You can check bugs here, you can report a new bug or ask for help on configuring file-roller with isoinfo (if possible):
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgrepor ... t=unstable
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgrepor ... t=unstable

[wilo108]

Indeed. I spoke to Paolo Bacchilega, the author of file-roller, about it and he is of the opinion that it's a p7zip bug -- p7zip is supposed to be capable of opening these files, I think, so it does seem that there's a bug there. It's not possible to configure the helper programs that file-roller uses, though -- and since p7zip-full is marked as a dependency i have to break stuff to remove it.

Ubuntu have seen fit to fork the file-roller package and alter the dependencies for the sake of a better user experience, and for the time being that's what I've done too. I have submitted info to upstream too.