symbolic link problem with configuration file

[farvardin]

Describe the bug
It looks like we can't use symbolic links with the configuration file (on Linux Mint 21)

• I have checked the FAQ and my issue is not mention there.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

I've made a link from my dotfile folder:

ln -s redshift.conf ~/.config/

Then redshift didn't took my changes into account. I've tested it from 2 different computers.

I've copied it instead

rm ~/.config/redshift.conf
cp redshift.conf ~/.config/

then my settings are working.

```**Expected behavior**

Redshift conf should work from an original file or from a symbolic link.


**Software versions (please complete the following information):**
 - OS: Linux mint 21
 - Redshift version: redshift 1.12
 - Distribution:  Linux Mint
 - Redshift installed from: apt-get

[BrokenParity]

just stumbled upon this now.
i don't know Mint Linux very well, but if this is Ubuntu/Debian derived, you have to adjust your 'apparmor' settings to allow 'redshift' to read its config file from locations other than '$HOME/.config', and apparmor doesn't allow it to follow symlinks as well.
not a bug.

[farvardin]

well, I've never bothered with AppArmor, I didn't even know it was used outside some servers' scope.

I suppose redshift has made some adjustement to skip AppArmor stuff, because none of my other applications behave this way, I can use symbolic links with a specific dotfiles folder.

It might not be a bug, but it's quite an annoyance, and it doesn't seem very logical to have such a behavior from AppArmor. If it's the default feature of apparmor, then I'll see if I can disable it completely, I don't like when a program make unix things behave unexpected, especially without any clear warning.

[raxod502]

This appears to be a valid bug in Redshift. The package provides /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.redshift which implements this broken behavior by enforcing reads to be limited to @{HOME}/.config/redshift.conf.

Normally, I would say it's an Ubuntu packaging bug, but the problematic AppArmor configuration is provided directly in this repo, making it in-scope for an upstream bug report: https://github.com/jonls/redshift/blob/master/data/apparmor/usr.bin.redshift.in