Bug 2451451

Summary: lesspipe processed xml files results in empty output or hard to read partial text
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Michal Hlavinka <mhlavink>
Component: lessAssignee: Michal Hlavinka <mhlavink>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: rawhideCC: fjanus, hhorak, kasal, mhlavink, praiskup
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Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: less-692-4.fc45 Doc Type: ---
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Last Closed: 2026-03-25 23:30:51 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Michal Hlavinka 2026-03-25 20:17:43 UTC
bugzilla for tracking/preserving information - as some users reported, when opening xml files, those are processed as html files, so it can result in completely empty output (when all information is in tags and attributes, no text blocks) or only partial information, as all text is mashed together and any information from tags and their attributes is lost. As xml files are often used for configuration or simple storage, the result is worse than when no xml processing happens.

Examples:
/usr/share/mime/video/mp4.xml - translations in one text block, information what is what language is lost
/usr/share/libvirt/cpu_map/x86_486.xml - hw specification in attributes, so only empty page
/usr/share/dbus-1/interfaces/org.freedesktop.systemd1.Service.xml - systemd service dbus interface description, only empty page
/usr/lib/firewalld/zones/public.xml - only zone text description, main information about zone services lost
dnf repomod.xml - shows only some hashes, context what are those is lost
/etc/libvirt/qemu/rhel9.xml - virtual machine configuration, only some useless random strings, context and most infromation lost
/usr/share/selinux/devel/include/admin.xml - blocks of strings and texts, unusable without a context that is missing


as a temporary solution, xml files won't be processed and will be shown directly as is

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
less /some/file.xml
Actual Results:
empty page or condensed page with most information lost

Expected Results:
information preserved

Comment 1 Fedora Update System 2026-03-25 20:34:36 UTC
FEDORA-2026-71c8240c37 (less-692-4.fc45) has been submitted as an update to Fedora 45.
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2026-71c8240c37

Comment 2 Fedora Update System 2026-03-25 23:30:51 UTC
FEDORA-2026-71c8240c37 (less-692-4.fc45) has been pushed to the Fedora 45 stable repository.
If problem still persists, please make note of it in this bug report.