Reinstall browser?

Question

Is it possible to reinstall the default browser on ubuntu-touch?

Although I did not uninstall the browser, it seems it somehow disappeared. When trying to start the browser, it seems the app will start, but shortly after the newly opened window just closes. I also cannot find the browser any more in the installed programs.

I don't use the browser very often and found an alternative in the Ubuntu-Store, but trying to open links in web apps would start the default browser, which does not work any more.

Any help is welcome.

Note: I don't think this is important, but I am using ubuntu-touch on a bq aquaris 4.5 phone.

PS: Result of troubleshooting as per Velkans suggestions (promts are omitted as I write this by hand).

dpkg --verify webbrowser-app
??5??????   /usr/share/lintian/overrides/webbrowser-app

I deleted the contents of /home/phablet/.local/share/webbrowser-app/ to no avail.

webbrowser-app --desktop_file_hint=/usr/share/applications/webbrowser-app.desktop

rebooted my device, the first time, returned nothing the second (it just gave me the promt as if the command had exited successfully) and rebooted the device the third time (after a short lag). No error messages are shown, I don't know where to search for log files.

Answer 1

It's not installed as a click package. It's a *.deb package, so it's inside the 'OS image' and not updated separately.

To check the integrity of this package run dpkg --verify webbrowser-app in the terminal (it should only complain about /usr/share/lintian/overrides/webbrowser-app). The OS image is read only after the install, so it's very unlikely that the problem is there.

Other location to check is /home/phablet/.local/share/webbrowser-app/ - the directory with settings and cache. Move it to some other place and launch the browser, that will reset something.

If it doesn't help, try to launch the webbrowser-app from terminal:

webbrowser-app --desktop_file_hint=/usr/share/applications/webbrowser-app.desktop

And read the error logs.

Answer 2

The original problem could have been a corrupt QML cache, which presents the symptom described where the app doesn't start but the window may appear briefly. To remedy that remove the cache, for example:

rm -r .cache/QML/Apps/webbrowser-app/

then start the app.

The same applies for any app that doesn't start, just delete the cache folder for that app.

Note that an update for the app will also trigger recreating the cache.