19.10, Python package local HTML docs cannot be opened in Chromium

**john_ladasky** · December 16th, 2019

Hi folks,

I just upgraded to Ubuntu 19.10. I installed my usual stack of Python data science tools -- Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, and Pandas. Canonical's repository includes optional documentation packages for each of these Python add-ons which are installed in /usr/share/doc. I don't like depending on an Internet connection to read programming docs, so I always download these and open them in a browser. I've been using Chromium for years.

When I tried to follow my various Chromium bookmarks, which link to file:///usr/share/doc/python...index.html, I got an error message from Chromium: "Your file was not found. It may have been moved or deleted. ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND". But the file URL was visible in the URL bar. If I tried to drag and drop these files into Chromium, bypassing my bookmarks, I got the same result.

I opened the HTML files in a text editor, and they were clearly present and undamaged. This led me to try opening them in Firefox, which worked. I have a workaround for now.

This may not be an Ubuntu problem. Who is responsible for the build of Chromium in the Canonical repositories? It appears that Google shares source code for the core of the Chrome browser, but it doesn't compile a finished product for Canonical. I may need to file a bug report.

Thanks for your advice!

**Impavidus** · December 16th, 2019

The chromium browser is starting from 19.10 only available as a snap package, not a traditional deb package. Snap packages are sandboxed for security, so they can't access any files outside your home directory. It should be possible to configure the sandboxing, but I think that using firefox is the easier solution.