Posted by Vince Wadhwani on Jan 01, 2008

I recently switched over to XFCE4.4 from KDE3 (am waiting to see how KDE4 shapes up..). I decided to use F-spot to manage my photos since it's added a lot of features I find useful. One of those features is a built-in upload to Flickr. Problem is that when I tried to use it the authorization would fail with an error that said "There was an error invoking the external handler...There was an error launching the default action command associated with this location." Here's how I solved it:

First, it couldn't hurt to make sure that your browser of choice is installed and the one you want to use. For me it's firefox/iceweasel/icecat/icewhatever. Run this command and choose as desired:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

That won't solve your problem but it's good to do to keep other problems from cropping up. The solution though is to launch gconf editor and edit a couple of strings. As a normal user, launch:

gconf-editor

Go through the following nested folders: / -> desktop -> gnome -> applications -> browser and double click where it says exec. Change it from epiphany-browser to whatever you use (e.g. iceweasel or firefox). Next, go find the next string in / -> desktop -> gnome -> url-handlers -> http and change the command string to iceweasel %s or firefox %s. For good measure, make the same change in https as well. With that done, just relaunch F-spot and try authorizing Flickr again.. you should be good to go!