[Bug]: Bottles 5.10 via Flatpak missing file access permissions?

[joelostblom]

Describe the bug

I recently updated to bottles 5.10 and it make one of my programs stop working with the error message: cant find file path/to/.exe. When downgrading to bottles 5.9 to fix the issue, I noticed that one of the permissions added was "file access" which seems like it could be the reason that the exe-file was not found in 5.10. I also noticed that wine was upgraded from 22.08 to 23.08 so that's a possible confounding factor.

You can see the added permission when downgrading in this screenshot:

To Reproduce

Try creating a bottle with a exe-file in 5.10. I used the standalong version of iClicker 5.x from https://www.iclicker.com/downloads/iclicker-cloud/

Package

Flatpak from Flathub

Distribution

PopOS 22.04 (Ubuntu)

Debugging Information

Note that this is for the working version, 5.9

Official Package: true
Version: '51.9'
DE/WM: pop
Display:
    X.org: true
    X.org (port): :1
    Wayland: false
Graphics:
    vendors:
        intel:
            vendor: intel
            envs:
                DRI_PRIME: '1'
            icd: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/GL/vulkan/icd.d/intel_hasvk_icd.x86_64.json:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/GL/vulkan/icd.d/intel_icd.x86_64.json:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/GL/vulkan/icd.d/intel_hasvk_icd.i686.json:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/GL/vulkan/icd.d/intel_icd.i686.json
    prime:
        integrated: null
        discrete: null
Kernel:
    Type: Linux
    Version: 6.6.10-76060610-generic
Disk:
    Total: 20951638016
    Free: 20951478272
RAM:
    MemTotal: 39.0GiB
    MemAvailable: 30.4GiB
Bottles_envs: null

Troubleshooting Logs

No response

Additional context

No response

[gdonval]

Bottle defaults to installing games in its own app-specific folder. If you want to install/use them out of that, you need to alter Flatpak's permission by yourself, either by using the CLI or by installing and using Flatseal.

---

Giving Bottle (and therefore games) unrestricted access to your home folder is generally not a good idea.

Games in the past have had bugs leading to the deletion of all your files. Some games feature very invasive "anti-cheat" software. Steam had a nasty bug back in 2015 that deleted all people's files... Plus Wine is able to run your typical Windows ransomware... And, even though it hasn't happened recently, errors in Wine could turn legit code into a data-eating mess.

---

So if you want your files somewhere else, that's not a problem: add that folder in your permission list using the flatpak command line tool or Flatseal:

But by default it makes more sense to just allow the minimum.