Ghostscript unable to write to non-boot volume after update to 25.10
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1560219/ghostscript-unable-to-write-to-non-boot-volume-after-update-to-25-10I'm having a hard time figuring out the best place to ask this question, but starting here since the problem started when I updated Ubuntu from 25.04 to 25.10 last month. In a nutshell, I have two physical volumes in my laptop, and after updating 25.10, Ghostscript can no longer write PDFs to one of them (but only one of them).
My hardware setup is as follows:
Boot drive that includes
$HOME(i.e.,/home/user).Second physical drive, symlinked from
$HOMEto store the bulk of my data. My main documents directory, therefore, is physically located at/mnt/data/user/Documents, thoughuser@machine~/Documents$ pwdreturns/home/user/Documents.
I am using Ghostscript, and particularly the ps2pdf script, as part of a LaTeX workflow for a document I update every month. I use TeXLive 2025 and my document makes heavy use of pstricks, so pdflatex is not a good option for me (and yes, I realize there may be options for working around Ghostscript, but I occasionally use it for other purposes so would like it to work regardless).
Here is the now-problematic workflow for a small, two-page test document when I execute it in ~/Documents (but I run into the same error regardless of the document):
$ latex test.tex
...
Output written on test.dvi (2 pages, 436 bytes)
...
$ dvips test.dvi
...
[1] [2]
$ ps2pdf test.ps
GPL Ghostscript 10.05.0: **** Could not open the file test.pdf .
**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting.
I also tried skipping the ps2pdf script and using a simple Ghostscript command directly, with the same result:
$ gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=test.pdf test.ps
GPL Ghostscript 10.05.0: **** Could not open the file test.pdf .**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting.
This happens no matter which subdirectory of ~/Documents I use, and also in other directories that are physically located on /mnt/data (e.g., ~/Pictures). However, if I run it in $HOME (or subdirectory of $HOME that is physically located on my boot drive), the PDF is produced without error as it has been every month for the last 6 years. Hence my conclusion that the problem is related to the physical volume somehow.
What I have tried:
Reinstalling
ghostscript.Checking directory owners and permissions.
$HOME:drwxr-xr-x 52 user user/mnt/data/user:drwxrwxrwx 11 user user/mnt/data/user/Documents:drwxrwxr-x 56 user userOwners and permissions for all subdirectories of
/mnt/data/userappear to be the same as for/mnt/data/user/Documents.
Running
sudo ps2pdf test.ps, which gives the same error as when running asuser.Providing the full path to the input file, both as
ps2pdf /mnt/data/user/Documents/test.psandps2pdf ~/Documents/test.ps, which gives the same error.
Ghostscript is the only application for which I have experienced this problem, and only since the update to Ubuntu 25.10. I believe, but am not 100% sure, that the Ghostscript version was 10.05.0 for both 25.04 and 25.10, but I think it could have been 10.03.1 on 25.04.
