Problem with CBZ & CBR thumbnails in Ubuntu Mate 16.10

After upgrading to Ubuntu 16.10 (Mate 1.16.0), I noticed that the thumbnails of my CBZ/CBR files (comic books) don’t display anymore. There’s no problem with image files, PDFs or video files.

If I create a zip/rar file from pictures and rename it to cbz/cbr, no thumbnail is created. It looks like the thumbnailer for this type of files has been removed. I think they’re supposed to be handled by Atril Thumbnailer, though I’m not sure.

Any idea as to what could have changed with Mate 1.16?

EDIT: if I try to manually generate a thumbnail from a .cbz file with atril-thumbnailer, I get the following error: Error loading document: File type archive zip (application/zip) is not supported
So either I’m missing a different thumbnailer that previously handled these files, the feature has been removed from Atril for some reason, or there’s an issue with mimetypes.

EDIT 2: trying to open a .cbz with Atril doesn’t work anymore either.

Just discovered a weird behaviour: if I create a .cbz (Zip) file and rename it as .cbr, not only does Atril generate a thumbnail but it can also open the file without problem. The opposite is not true : having a .cbr (Rar) file and renaming it to .cbz doesn’t generate a thumbnail and Atril still complains about application/vnd.rar not being handled when opening it.

I also have this bug. .cbr/.cbz can be opened with Comix or mComix without problem, but Atril does not recognize those files anymore. And there are no thumbnails.

It was fixed in Atril 1.16.1. Now what’s left is to get the fix into Ubuntu 16.10 repos… either as the new upstream release or as a patch for the current one.

Good to know. Is there any chances it’ll be put in the backports or will we have to wait for Ubuntu Mate 17.04?

That’s the question for @Wimpy - I’m just an upstream developer :slight_smile:

I will start updating the 17.04 packages tomorrow, including this fix, and will see if it can be SRU’d to 16.10.

That’d be great, thanks. :slight_smile:

If they would allow a new upstream release (that is, 1.16.1) for SRU, it would be better than picking patches, because it would also fix an annoying bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1540018

See this thread for discussion of the impact it causes:

I’ve just updated to 17.04 and the issue is still present in part: Atril can now open CBZ and CBR files again, CBZ thumbnails are generated but not CBR ones.

Any idea why? Do I need to install a specific package (unrar non-free version is already there)?

EDIT: renaming a .cbr to .cbz generates the thumbnail. Opposite as the previous behaviour. Also, when used manually, atril-thumbnailer is able to generate a thumbnail of a .cbr file. Not sure what is happening.

EDIT 2: ok, problem solved by deleting the fail dir in ~/.cache/thumbnails. I assume they were generated when Atril was broken in 16.10 and these were used instead of retrying to build them. As Atril was previously unable to managed .cbz files, it didn’t generate failed thumbnails and so they were done correctly in 17.04.

Noticed recently that cbr files stopped generating thumbnails again in 18.10. Opening a .cbz with Atril works fine but a .cbr gives me the message that rar files (application/vnd.rar) are not supported. Either there’s a regression in Atril and the issue is back or I’m missing a package for handling rar files.

@monsta @Wimpy any idea on the matter?