flatpak Thunderbird won't save multiple attachments to a directory the user has access to

[hzulla]

This happened using Thunderbird 102.2.2 on Ubuntu 22.04 with flatpak 1.14.0-2flatpak1~22.04.1 (installed via the ppa).

• I have a message in my sent folder that has 13 PDF documents attached to it
• Wanted to save all PDF files into a local folder
• Clicked "Save All" button (bottom right corner)
• TB offered me a file picker dialog to choose the target directory
• I chose the /tmp/ folder, file picker dialog closes and returns to TB
• TB responds with two modal error message dialogs:

  "Unable to save the attachment. Please check your file name and try again later." [OK] "Unable to save the message. Please check your file name and try again later." [OK]

• That's it, none of the 13 files were saved to /tmp/ despite having write access to it.

[Erick555]

Weird, it works for me. Does it always happens for all attachments?

[hzulla]

Yes.

If I click on the "Save All" button instead (marked red in the screenshot above), the file chooser appears, I can choose the same target location directory and the reported behaviour of the bug report happens. This happens with any message that contains multiple attachments that I tried.

[hzulla]

While the bug happens for messages with more than one attachment, things work fine for messages that contain only one attachment. The button shown in the screenshot then changes from [Save all] to [Save] and then it works as expected.

[hzulla]

Brief detour, possibly related to this bug:

1. In Thunderbird, if I click on an individual attachment to save it, the file chooser appears, I can choose a target location directory such as /tmp, change the target filename if desired, and in the end the file is stored at the chosen target location as expected.
2. If I then click on a different attachment right after that (or use the [Save] button multiple times), the bug reported here happens - the file chooser doesn't show me the /tmp directory with all of its files as the target directory for the second file, but instead shows me a virtual /run/user/1000/doc/<hex_id_number> directory that only contains the file I stored in step 1. As a naive user I assumed that the second file would now be stored into the same directory from step 1, but while I can select this target location in the file chooser and TB (or FF) do not complain and show no error message about it, the second file is never stored anywhere and just silently dropped.

[Erick555]

So it doesn't work because you try saving file to /run/user/1000/doc/ instead of actual /tmp and when you change path in file dialog back to /tmp it works??

[j-wiedemann]

Hi ! Same problem here with TB 102.3.0 (64 bits). But I notice that the save all function work only if I save files somewhere inside ~/Downloads.

[hzulla]

when you change path in file dialog back to /tmp it works??

Yes, that is true for the "detour bug report" that became https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/886

However, sorry for the confusion, the original bug report in this issue here is about the [Save All] button. I can confirm @j-wiedemann's report that "save all" with a multiple-attachments-message works as expected for me if I choose ~/Downloads as the target folder, but doesn't work if I choose /tmp in the file chooser.

[Erick555]

So this issue isn't the same as the one you reported in the x-d-p repo or it is?

[hzulla]

No, the bug report in the top entry of this issue is a different bug than the one later in the comment down below. I rephrased the latter into a separate bug report for the x-d-p repo.

However, I suspect these two bugs are possibly related, since they both occur when a user action tries to save more than one file at a time to a directory other than ~/Downloads.