Use whitelisting for video players

[Fred-Barclay]

Switches video players over to a whitelist basis.

I've tested celluloid, vlc, and xplayer and they seem to be fine - would really appreciate additional testing! 😃

[rusty-snake]

LGTM, some thoughts.

1. We never whitelist ${DESKTOP} or similar in related programs (e.g. document-viewer, image-viewer, ...).
2. Depending on how strict we want it we should remove whitelist ${DOCUMENTS}. (see 1.).
3. I use disbale-xdg.local to blacklist/read-only also other folders in my home (e.g. git, …) since it is included in blacklisting profiles which don't need wider access.
4. mpv has a screenshot function, which stores by default under something like ~/screenshot-%date%.png

[glitsj16]

Looks fine. As I have run with whitelisting profiles for mplayer and mpv for a long time I can confirm both work as expected.

On the matter of completely removing disable-xdg.inc I also never whitelist ${DESKTOP} and ${DOCUMENTS} in media player profiles.

[Fred-Barclay]

Thanks @rusty-snake and @glitsj16 !

To address your thoughts...

1/2 my completely unproven gut feeling is that folks would be more likely to have videos on Desktop than Documents. Perhaps remove Documents but keep Desktop visible in the sandbox??

3. I believe we have to remove disable-xdg.inc or (alternatively) noblacklist everything but Documents (and potentially Desktop). At that rate it might be more clear to just blacklist Documents instead of having include disable-xdg.inc followed by a bunch of noblacklists.

4. Definitely will fix this one, thanks!

[glitsj16]

1/2 my completely unproven gut feeling is that folks would be more likely to have videos on Desktop than Documents. Perhaps remove Documents but keep Desktop visible in the sandbox??

I can see your point. Personally I can live with removing ${DOCUMENTS} and keeping ${DESKTOP}.

About point 3. I have come across situations like these before a few times, meaning that whatever one opts for, users are going to have to decide on loosening/tightening individual profiles via *.local files. In such cases I think it makes more sense to make it harder on users to loosen sandboxes, instead of 'punishing' users that favor more tightened profiles. So in this case I would opt for keeping include disable-xdg.inc, even if that means having a few more lines in the profiles. Hope this makes sense, I might have one of those 'fuzzy logic' brain cells :)

[curiosityseeker]

I also vote for removing ${DOCUMENTS} and keeping ${DESKTOP} - but what about making the latter read-only?

[rusty-snake]

but what about making the latter read-only?

IMHO we should add

read-only ${HOME}
read-write ${HOME}/.config/foo
read-write ${HOME}/.local/share/foo

to more profiles in general.

[Fred-Barclay]

I also vote for removing ${DOCUMENTS} and keeping ${DESKTOP} - but what about making the latter read-only?

My concern is with editing file metadata here - for example I believe VLC lets you easily change artist/album names? Maybe not too much an issue with videos but it's not unreasonable to expect people to play i.e. mp3s with video players and read-only access would be an issue here.

Also unrelated side note - I messed up by pushing tomaster on my fork for this PR - might have to close and send in a similar one, apologies for any inconvenience. 😄

[curiosityseeker]

My concern is with editing file metadata here - for example I believe VLC lets you easily change artist/album names? Maybe not too much an issue with videos but it's not unreasonable to expect people to play i.e. mp3s with video players and read-only access would be an issue here.

I understand, and I think you're right. Nevertheless I feel a bit uneasy. Write permission for the supported extensions would be probably preferable but it's a bit complicated to achieve. This is an example where something like what I suggested in #3424 would be helpful.

[rusty-snake]

anyone fine?

[Fred-Barclay]

Oops, sorry! I'll try to get this updated ASAP!

[Fred-Barclay]

Updated! @rusty-snake as you mention mpv has a screenshot function that saves to $HOME I wonder if we should go back to blacklisting for this one?

[rusty-snake]

Why adding read-only ${DESKTOP} while removing its whitelist? (read-only come at the end of the file)

[Fred-Barclay]

@rusty-snake thanks, gotten a little rusty here, should have kept the whitelist as well...

[rusty-snake]

We can do it like here (deb6c12#diff-74e11ae375b6951607bb9f53d646c4e4).

~/.config/mpv/foobar.conf:

screenshot-directory=~/Pictures