Gnome Files / Nautilus no longer able to rename files when open

[isleshocky77 (Stephen Ostrow)]

I’ve always had the following workflow going back a decade plus of renaming a large amount of files.

• Have a a folder full of pdfs which are named in an incrementing series (e.g. file001.pdf, file002.pdf, file003.pdf).
• Open file001.pdf, look at the date on the file, rename the file in nautilus using that information
• Open file002.pdf, look at the date on the file, rename the file in nautilus using that information
• Rinse, Repeat

I just noticed that I can no longer do this. When I open a pdf document from Nautilus using Gnome Document Viewer, and then attempt to rename the file, I get the following error:

The item could not be renamed. Could not rename “file001pdf” because a process is using it. If it’s open in another applicatoin, close it before renaming it.

I thought this might be a new Document Viewer issue, so I attempted to open it with a different program. But I’m having the same result.

Is this a new Nautilus Issue related to the redesigns in Modernize the appearance of Properties (#1326) · Issues · GNOME / Files · GitLab and Modernize properties window (!745) · Merge requests · GNOME / Files · GitLab ?

Is this some other sort of issue from the latest version of Ubuntu 24.04?

Can I change this behavior some how?

[isleshocky77 (Stephen Ostrow)]

I just realized, it looks like this might only be happening when the file being opened is using CIFS.

Wonder if this helps.

[Sid]

Does renaming (via mv command) from console work?

[p3732 (Peter Eisenmann)]

Hi, I am fairly sure this change is due to Ubuntu-related changes. Preventing changes to opened files is not something that was added to Nautilus recently, it might have been added to the backend, but I am fairly sure it already was around before and only requires appropriate flags were set for the partition.