Modeler executable startup problem

The last few releases of the Camunda Modeler (I am using 3.7.2) have a different startup behavior than before. I have been using a Ubuntu 16.04 desktop for several years now, and have not faced this issue before.

In earlier releases, I was able to start up the modeler by simply double-clicking the file named “camunda-modeler” in any file browser window.

But in the last few weeks (during which I upgraded to 3.7.1 and then to 3.7.2) I have not been able to start the modeler by double-clicking the file. It can however be started from a command window by entering the same file name at the command prompt.

I am unable to understand or work around this issue (other than using a command window), and it is quite an inconvenience.

Any guidance or ideas on solving this will be very valuable. Thanks in advance for any hints!

Looks like startup issue with double click only if so

Hi, thanks for your attention to this.

I did check what kind of file the camunda-modeler is (using Ubuntu’s file command-line utility), and it does not appear to be a shell script. Here is the output from the file command:

camunda-modeler: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/l, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, BuildID[sha1]=ec986f9191f90403e99843c9e9bb33b8534bf486, stripped

Thanks again

Looking into your post this looks like an instance of this bug.

In summary, the latest modeler versions (starting with 3.6) ship with security hardened binaries (position independent executable). That binary, unfortunately is not properly recognized as an executable by the file utility. As the file utility is used by all major file system browsers on Linux to detect what is executable and what is not, it shows up as a shared library. Please read about the details here.

The appropriate fix for this issue is that the file tool properly understands these executable types.

Opening the file via command line and/or desktop shortcut should still work absolutely fine. You may also create a simple bash script to open the modeler from and double click that one.

Hope this helps!

For reference, the upstream Ubuntu bug.

Thanks for the insight. Much appreciated.

Sanjay