bwrap: Can't make symlink at /home/<username>/Pictures: File exists

[PorcelainMouse]

Linux distribution and version

Fedora 29

Flatpak version

1.0.6

Description of the problem

Cannot start steam, has worked in the past.

I've seen this before, and then it went away or I deleted the symlink and let steam recreate it or something. Why does this keep coming up? Why does steam care about these directories that my Desktop Env manages? This is non-standard behavior. Steam is already using .local/share/flatpak/app/... . Why does steam care about anything in $HOME?

Several other similar bugs exist, but the closest one is bug #1278, which is closed, yet he problem still exists.

Steps to reproduce

$ flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam
bwrap: Can't make symlink at /home/pdestefa/Pictures: File exists

[ioogithub]

I have the same problem but with Music

$ flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam

bwrap: Can't make symlink at /home/oem/Music: File exists

[strootje]

I've have the same with my ~/Music folder.
My Music folder is a symlink which points to an external drive.
I have to rename my ~/Music folder, after which steam starts file. Once steam is started I can rename the Music folder back again.

I've read somewhere, and I'm sorry I cannot find the source anymore, that this is an issue with symlinks in ~ where ~ is persisted.

This seems to have fixed this:
#1971

I ran xdg-user-dirs-update --set MUSIC /mnt/nas/music

[RossComputerGuy]

I have the same problem on nixOS except it wants to symlink ~/.nix-profile.

[Justinzobel]

Still an issue on 1.15.4

[hideki2k02]

I'm getting a similar problem but its because i made a script that runs at startup to generate a symlink at /run/user/1000/discord-ipc-0

bwrap: Can't make symlink at /run/user/1000/discord-ipc-0: File exists

One thing that is worth noting is that if its a hardlink Flatpak wont complain, so the current workarounds:

• Delete the Symlink that the program is complaining then run the program again
• Using a hardlink (In my case i've replaced my startup script to create a hardlink)

PS: Maybe a way to fix this is to just clear all symlinks once the program closes/Just ignore the symlink if it already exists for some reason.

[shvetsnikita]

I have the same problem but with Music
$ flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam
bwrap: Can't make symlink at /home/oem/Music: File exists

Is there any way to workaround this by maybe changing something in Flatseal?

[rugk]

Is there any way to workaround this by maybe changing something in Flatseal?

Well… even removing the permissions does not work, see flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam#887

However, there are obvious workarounds like removing the symbolic link or renaming it. See also #4894 (comment) for a wild idea that is said to partially work.

[shvetsnikita]

@rugk

As I found out replacing symlinks with fstab binds works too, and x-gvfs-hide flag hide it from Nautilus.