Greetings, fellow forum members!

I have encountered interesting issue while playing with kgtk -- it is a wrapper to use KDE open/save dialogs within GTK and QT4 applications.
I install kgtk, and link the wrapper to /usr/local/bin/program_name as suggested in the manual, e.g.

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cd /usr/local/bin/
ln -s /usr/bin/kgtk-wrapper firefox

My PATH is:

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$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/opt/bin:/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.3.4:/usr/qt/3/bin:/usr/games/bin

So /usr/local/bin/firefox should now start first. It works if I start firefox from a terminal -- I get KDE4 open/save dialogs.
However, if I start firefox via KDE -- Alt+F2 dialog, Kickoff-menu or desktop icon, I still get GTK menus. A workaround is to edit firefox.desktop to /usr/local/bin/firefox, but it can't be the right way.

So the question is -- where does KDE4 store its path and why it overrides mine? How do I make /usr/local/bin/ my first path in KDE4?

It is a 32-bit system with KDE compiled witout kdeprefix flag.

Where do you set $PATH? It needs to be done before startkde is run. Alternately, you can use a script in $(kde4-config --localprefix)/env/ to set it appropriately...

I've tried just that, no luck.
It seems to me that it is xdg-open who opens wrong path -- it is xdg-open who interprets .desktop files. Have to read how do I configure its behavior.

EDIT: Yes, the root of the problem is xdg-open: if I have "Exec=firefox %U" in firefox.desktop file and execute "xdg-open ./firefox.desktop" it starts /usr/bin/firefox and not /usr/local/bin/firefox.

Of course, I can create .desktop entries in ~/.local/share/applications/ and place "Exec=/usr/local/bin/program" for each program I intend to launch via /usr/local/bin, but it is to bothersome. There should be another way to configure xdg-open-

Interestingly, I can't reproduce although my situation is slightly different....
Self compiled trunk, used xdg-open to run System Settings.

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xdg-open /usr/share/applications/kde4/systemsettings.desktop

The application opened wasn't /usr/bin/systemsettings but /opt/trunk-kde/kde/bin/systemsettings as expected ( ie. PATH was respected )

When I added an executable script named "firefox" to /opt/trunk-kde/kde/bin/ that worked too. You may wish to check that your script is executable...

Steps to reproduce for me:

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#ln -s /usr/bin/konqueror /usr/local/bin/firefox

Create firefox.desktop with following:

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#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Mozilla Firefox
Comment=Web Browser
Exec=firefox %U
Icon=firefox-icon
Terminal=false
Type=Application
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;text/mml;
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
StartupNotify=true


"firefox" from terminal starts Konqueror, "xdg-open firefox.desktop" starts Firefox (it asks whether I trust the script to be executed on first run and sets it to executable if I agree).
"kfmclient exec mozilla-firefox-3.6.desktop" starts Firefox as well.

If it works for you correct then it might be gentoo-related issue.

It may be possible that the XDG standard requires that symlinks are ignored. I used actual executable files... additionally, did you logoff after placing the file in ~/.kde4/env? it is needed to take any changes in that directory into effect.

I am experiencing the same issue as Erik in Kubuntu 10.04 as well as openSuSE 11.2 for the short time i had it installed, both KDE 4.4.4. The only difference is that my specific case is I need stuff to run from $HOME/bin.

I have tried adding $HOME/bin to the beginning of my path in ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc, ~/.kde/env/path.sh, and /etc/environment. ALL of them run executables from $HOME/bin when in a terminal, as it should, and ALL seem to ignore that PATH from ANYWHERE within kde or xdg-open.

Anyone have any further ideas on a fix?

Is the script you placed in ~/.kde/env/path.sh executable? Also, please verify using the output of "kde4-config --localprefix" that ~/.kde is that correct directory.

Yes it is executable, and kde-config --localprefix does return ~/.kde

Please check the content of the *.desktop files whose behaviour you are trying to modify. They may reference the executables in question by unexpected names or directly on the file system.

This is the entire contents of the .desktop

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[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_US]=Browse the World Wide Web
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
Exec=firefox %u
GenericName[en_US]=Web Browser
GenericName=Web Browser
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/firefox.png
MimeType=text/html;image/png;image/jpeg;image/gif;application/xml;application/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;
Name[en_US]=Firefox Web Browser
Name=Firefox Web Browser
NoDisplay=false
Path=
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=Firefox
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
Version=1.0
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=
X-MultipleArgs=false

Unfortunately I do not know why this issue is occurring.. can you try placing a script in ~/.kde4/Autostart which echo's $PATH?

You will then be able to see this output in ~/.xsession-errors.

The PATH echoed to .xsession-errors is identical to what is echoed from a normal terminal with $HOME/bin listed first.

Unfortunately I don't know why this occurs. Please file a bug report at bugs.kde.org.

Just in case anyone else cares to follow it... https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=242834