[MPlayer-users] mime-type of the installed MPlayer executable?

[Reimar Döffinger]

On 14.06.2013, at 09:37, andrew <andrew at andrews-corner.org> wrote:
> I run the svn MPlayer on both Slackware and Ubuntu and in both cases
> the mime-type of the installed executable seems a little odd:
> 
> -----
> andrew at skamandros~$ file --mime-type -b /usr/bin/mplayer
> application/x-sharedlib

That's not the mime-type if the file, that is just what the file tool detects it as translated into a mime-type.
When the "file" tool detects nonsense the mime-type will be too.
The tool detects PIE executables as libraries - which isn't technically all that wrong but not in the least user-friendly, and when reducing that result to a mime-type it just gets completely wrong.

> where I would expect to see application/x-executable.

If you are on a 64 bit system and none of the other binaries have this "issue" your system is badly build (almost all distributions are, things like Gentoo hardened do it but then go too far for what most users want/need by enabling security features that do have a significant cost). PIE increases security and on x86_64 does so at almost no cost.
However we had to delay our switch to it a bit because it tends to expose lingering bugs and bad coding practices in support libraries (it feels ridiculous saying that considering many old parts of the MPlayer code base - which haven't had these issues in ages as far as I am aware...).