Links from PDF not opening in Brave

[galettof]

Description

Links to website in PDF files do not open in Brave.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open a PDF file in Evince.
2. Click on a url link.

Actual result:

Mouse cursor changes to spinning wheel, nothing else happens.

Expected result:

The link should open in Brave.

Reproduces how often:

Every time.

Brave version (brave://version info)

Brave	1.27.109 Chromium: 92.0.4515.115 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision	48cb2f4029b84b003719740a6cf9ca73f374a857-refs/branch-heads/4515_105@{#4}
OS	Linux

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? Yes.
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel? Don't know.
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel? Don't know.

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? N/A
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? N/A
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? Don't know.

Miscellaneous Information:

If I switch default browser to Firefox, then links open as expected.
Opening Evince from terminal and clicking on a link in a PDF file returns the following terminal message:
sh: 1: exec: /usr/bin/brave-browser-stable: Permission denied

[btlechowski]

Thank you for reporting.

Reproduced the issue on

Brave	1.27.109 Chromium: 92.0.4515.115 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision	48cb2f4029b84b003719740a6cf9ca73f374a857-refs/branch-heads/4515_105@{#4}
OS	Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

PDF used: http://www.pdf995.com/samples/pdf.pdf

Note: Opening link from Charles works as expected

Also reproduced on beta and nightly:

Brave	1.28.98 Chromium: 92.0.4515.115 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
Revision	48cb2f4029b84b003719740a6cf9ca73f374a857-refs/branch-heads/4515_105@{#4}
OS	Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Brave	1.29.42 Chromium: 92.0.4515.115 (Official Build) nightly (64-bit)
Revision	48cb2f4029b84b003719740a6cf9ca73f374a857-refs/branch-heads/4515_105@{#4}
OS	Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

cc @rebron @wknapik

[wknapik]

Can't repro on my system (Arch Linux).

@galettof please take a look here. The instructions were written for Arch, but they apply on any distro. And please paste the outputs from the "Debugging" section.

[galettof]

Thank you both! I will take a look at the Arch instructions, hopefully later today.

For what it's worth, links used to open from PDF files into Brave. I don't remember when they stopped working nor if there was any major change in my system that could be responsible.

[galettof]

I tried following the Arch instructions. Everything appeared to be set correctly, with the exception of the BROWSER variable. Unfortunately, setting that variable did not make a difference in my case.

[kjozwiak]

@simonhong mentioned he could also reproduce the above via Chrome so it seems like an upstream issue.

[dann-merlin]

I had the issue too and was able to fix it.
It was due to apparmor not allowing brave to run. This is because for some reason the apparmor configurations were missing for me.
All of the following commands need root privileges, so a sudo might need do be prepended.
To fix them, add this to /etc/apparmor.d/abstractions/ubuntu-browsers:

  /opt/brave.com/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly}/brave-browser{,-beta,-dev,-nightly} Cx -> sanitized_helper,
  /opt/brave.com/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly}/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly} Cx -> sanitized_helper,

and add this to /etc/apparmor.d/abstractions/ubuntu-helpers:

  /opt/brave.com/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly}/chrome-sandbox PUxr,
  /opt/brave.com/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly}/chrome_crashpad_handler PUxr,
  /opt/brave.com/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly}/brave-browser{,-beta,-dev,-nightly} Pixr,
  /opt/brave.com/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly}/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly} Pixr,
  /opt/brave.com/brave{,-beta,-dev,-nightly}/{,**/}lib*.so{,.*} m,

Either reboot then or execute this command to reload the apparmor profile for evince:

apparmor_parser -r /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.evince

The next time evince is started, it worked for me.

Alternatively, though not advised, as it disables a lot of the security added by apparmor, you can set the apparmor profile to complain instead of enforce like this (apparmor-utils need to be installed, if you are on Ubuntu):

aa-complain /usr/bin/evince

Edit:
crashpad_handler was renamed to chrome_crashpad_handler recently. I edited this fix above accordingly.

[galettof]

This worked for me, thank you!