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com.apple.quarantine extended attribute gets set on opening a file with Marked 2

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Greg Hurrell

15 Dec, 2015 09:44 AM

I wonder whether this is the result of sandboxing stuff that applies to the Mac App store version of this app, but I'm seeing the com.apple.quarantine extended attribute getting set on any file that I open with Marked 2.

Example, given "sample.md", ls -l@ sample.md shows the com.apple.quarantine attribute is present and xattr -p com.apple.quarantine sample.md shows it was creaded by Marked 2 (ie. it prints 0002;566fdc88;Marked 2;).

As a result, any attempt to open the file from the terminal with open -a Marked\ 2.app sample.md fails with the incredibly cryptic and misleading "The window server could not be contacted. open must be run with a user logged in at the console, either as that user or as root."

Workaround, remove the attribute with xattr -d com.apple.quarantine sample.md.

Alas, this doesn't appear to happen 100% of the time, and I haven't been able to discover the exact conditions necessary to make it happen. In my various experiments though, I've seen the attribute being set as a result of using open both inside and outside of tmux, and also as a result of using the "Open Recent" submenu in Marked 2 itself.

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Brett on 15 Dec, 2015 04:07 PM

   

   I am able to replicate this with the MAS version, and not the direct
   version, which lends credence to the idea that it's sandbox-related. I
   do not do anything unusual when reading a file, so I'll have to look
   into why this is happening.

   I do not, however, have any problem running `open -a Marked\ 2.app` on a
   file that gets the quarantine attribute set. If you run the command with
   the full path to Marked 2.app, do you still get that cryptic error?

   I'm willing to bet that apple will frown on anything that messes with
   that bit from within the app, so I'll need to figure out why it's
   happening in the first place.

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2. Support Staff 2 Posted by Brett on 15 Dec, 2015 04:10 PM

   

   What OS are you on? It looks like there was a related bug in OS X that
   started in Lion, but I assume it's been cleared up by now.

   -Brett

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3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Brett on 15 Dec, 2015 04:23 PM

   

   I figured it out already, there's an esoteric entitlement needed for the
   app, which I've added for the next update. Thanks for pointing this out.

   reference:
   http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9544874/how-can-i-stop-my-app-from-setting-the-quarantine-bit#comment36131063_11993894

   -Brett

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4. 4 Posted by Greg Hurrell on 15 Dec, 2015 05:19 PM

   

   Excellent find! Thanks for digging into that.

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