Downloading files fails on non-English systems

The XDG downloads folder name is defined by the $XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR variable in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/user-dirs.dirs.

For XDG translatable user dirs and apparmor policy, please see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apparmor/+bug/1061693. This only deals with traditional desktop policy though and not touch policy. In terms of support on Touch, it was decided long ago (I can't seem to find the thread, but I can keep looking if required) that we would not support translatable XDG user dirs on the phone (note, they have been problematic for other reasons). This decision was taken early on in the Touch project (I believe seb128 was involved). AIUI, a future converged experience would also not support the problematic translatable XDG user dirs either.

I too remember that decision to not translate XDG folders for touch.
Not sure how well that will play with convergence though.

In any case, I had a look at the contents of /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/xdg-user-dirs.d/site.local on my desktop, and it appears no XDG_* variable is overridden there (all the lines in that file are commented out). How is that supposed to work? Would referencing "@{HOME}/@{XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR}" work in an apparmor profile?

I'm having that problem. In my case my local is spanish.
The log file from web-browser app returns me that:
Failed moving file from "/home/phablet/.local/share/ubuntu-download-manager/webbrowser-app/Downloads/example.pdf" to "/home/phablet/Downloads/example.pdf"

In my case im not sure if it is related with the local or the translation. I think that it could be because my Downloads folder in /home/phablet is a sym link to : /media/phablet/SD-CARD/Downloads

Maybe webbrowser didn't expect support to move files to a symbolic link folder...
May I report this as a new bug?
http://paste.ubuntu.com/14848556/

Thanks for the report Josué, that is indeed a different issue. I think your suspicion is correct, the apparmor confinement isn’t letting you follow the symlink to the SD card. Did you create that symlink manually? Before filing a separate bug, you might want to expose the problem on the ubuntu-phone mailing list (<email address hidden>), I’m sure security experts can help figure out the issue.

/etc/apparmor.d/tunables/xdg-user-dirs.d/site.local is for just that, local site settings and that is why nothing is set in there. To see what apparmor is using as the defaults, see /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/xdg-user-dirs. You are free to adjust /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/xdg-user-dirs (though beware, it is a Debian conffile), /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/xdg-user-dirs.d/site.local or any other file in /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/xdg-user-dirs.d.

I have modified webbrowser-app’s apparmor profile to refer to "@{HOME}/@{XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR}/" instead of "@{HOME}/Downloads/", but that alone is not enough, I’m still getting the same error on my system with a French locale.

Next I edited /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/xdg-user-dirs.d/site.local to set the value of @{XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR} to "Téléchargements", reloaded the webbrowser-app profile, and that worked.

I’ll go ahead and submit a change to the browser policy to use @{XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR}, that can’t hurt either way. However we’ll still be missing a mechanism that automatically sets the value of that variable based on the user’s locale (third bullet point in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apparmor/+bug/1061693/comments/1).

@olivier
Yes i made those symlinks with command "ln -s -r" through terminal.
As you suggested I'm going to make it as separate bug. Thanks for the info. I'm not sure if it is a problem with the policy of confinement since if I download a file with dekko I haven't that problem :) thanks.

AFAIK dekko doesn’t download files to the Downloads folder, which would explain why you’re not getting the error with it.

This bug was fixed in the package webbrowser-app - 0.23+16.04.20160303-0ubuntu1

---------------
webbrowser-app (0.23+16.04.20160303-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  [ CI Train Bot ]
  * Resync trunk.

  [ Olivier Tilloy ]
  * Refer to @{XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR} in the browser’s apparmor profile
    instead of hardcoding "Downloads" in English. (LP: #1535666)
  * Store entries in the history database on load committed, not load
    succeeded. This ensures that content-initiated navigations are also
    stored. (LP: #1455858, #1549780)
  * Update translation template.
  * Visual tweaks per designers’ review.

 -- Olivier Tilloy <email address hidden> Thu, 03 Mar 2016 19:01:40 +0000

Not fully fixed per comment #7.