Permission denied error when running apps installed as snap packages - Ubuntu 17.04

I get Permission denied error when running a snap application, where my home directory is mounted on an nfs mount point that does not allow root-write. This is not an unusual configuration, so I consider this a bug.

The error message:

cannot create user data directory: /home/tcumming/snap/vlc/4: Permission denied

Also had the same problem with ubuntu 16.

Some more info as requested:

Using the ubuntu, "Ubuntu Software" I install a snap application (for example, vlc). When I attempt to run it (from the command line), I get the, "Permission denied" message above.

I had just reinstalled Ubuntu on the machine, so there has been no messing around with the OS. I did preserve my uid:gid so I could mount my prior nfs share.

This is not a problem with the mount point, or nfs. Our mount point is not root-writeable for security reasons.

I guess the question is, should I file a bug report? What are my next steps?

Same happens in Ubuntu 18.04.

If the user home directory is not under the /home (or /) mount, it not possible to work with snap. My HOMEDIR was on another local SSD disk, but since it was not mounted under /home, every package installed by snap was failing.

Since Canonical is moving to support snap, you will have to loose this kind of nice things, such as HOMEDIRs on other file systems, mounted by NFS, etc.

Maybe snap will be more flexible inthe future, but it is not a priority: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/how-can-i-use-snap-when-i-dont-use-home-user/3352/6

The workaround right now is to remove snap and install things from *.tar.gz or from *.deb packages.

I ran into this because my home directory is symlinked from /home/$USER to another mount point. I fixed it with the suggestion from when /home is somewhere else, snaps don't work.

In short, you need to add your non-standard home directory to apparmor's HOMEDIRS variable:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure apparmor

or: create a file in /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/home.d/ that points to your home directory's mount point:

@{HOMEDIRS}+=/mnt/hdd/.home/

Then, just for good measure, you should delete apparmor's cache and reboot:

$ sudo rm -f /etc/apparmor.d/cache/* /var/cache/apparmor/snap.*
$ sudo reboot