Arch Linux

1ptb3b

Member

Registered: 2017-01-17

Posts: 76

google-chrome and firefox black screen google hangout screenshare

I was in a Google Hangout video call with a coworker and I wanted to share my screen. So I clicked on Present Now > Your entire screen. However I could see in the preview, and my coworker later confirmed, that the entire screen was black. No windows were visible, not even a mouse.

I'm using GNOME with Wayland.

[~]$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
wayland
[~]$ gnome-shell --version
GNOME Shell 3.34.0
[~]$ google-chrome-stable --version
Google Chrome 77.0.3865.90 
[~]$ firefox --version
Mozilla Firefox 69.0.1

As an experiment, I also tried sharing my screen with Firefox. Knowing Chrome doesn't currenly have any Wayland support, I launched Firefox with Wayland support, to see if that would make a difference.

MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox

However, I got the exact same result as Chrome. A black screen.

What finally did work was logging out and logging back in with GNOME on Xorg. Then Chrome screenshare worked.

My question is:
Is there a way to get screensharing to work on Wayland? Or is it broken and I'm forced to use Xorg?

Last edited by 1ptb3b (2020-01-28 20:55:00)

nhasian

Member

From: AZ, USA

Registered: 2012-12-13

Posts: 31

Re: google-chrome and firefox black screen google hangout screenshare

Take a look at pipewire to do screensharing in wayland
http://jgrulich.cz/2018/07/04/how-to-en … n-wayland/

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1ptb3b

Member

Registered: 2017-01-17

Posts: 76

Re: google-chrome and firefox black screen google hangout screenshare

Hm. No dice. Here's what I did.

Going off the Arch Wiki, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PipeWire, I installed these.

# pacman -S xdg-desktop-portal-gtk pipewire

Here's the version I installed.

$ pipewire --version
pipewire
Compiled with libpipewire 0.2.6
Linked with libpipewire 0.2.6

I tried a

systemctl --user status pipewire.service

and noticed the service was inactive, so I ran

systemctl --user enable pipewire.service

and rebooted just to be sure.

When I got back, I did this to verify everything was running.

systemctl --user status pipewire.socket
systemctl --user status pipewire.service

The socket seemed fine, but something went wrong with the service it seems like.

$ systemctl --user status pipewire.service
● pipewire.service - Multimedia Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2019-09-23 23:06:09 PDT; 3min 17s ago
 Main PID: 962 (pipewire)
   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/pipewire.service
           └─962 /usr/bin/pipewire

Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[956]: pipewire.service: Passing 1 fds to service
Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[956]: pipewire.service: About to execute: /usr/bin/pipewire
Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[956]: pipewire.service: Forked /usr/bin/pipewire as 962
Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[962]: Skipping PR_SET_MM, as we don't have privileges.
Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[956]: pipewire.service: Changed dead -> running
Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[956]: pipewire.service: Job 21 pipewire.service/start finished, result=done
Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[956]: Started Multimedia Service.
Sep 23 23:06:09 systemd[962]: pipewire.service: Executing: /usr/bin/pipewire
Sep 23 23:06:09 pipewire[962]: [E][v4l2-utils.c:76 spa_v4l2_open()] v4l2: Cannot open '/dev/video0': 13, Permission denied
Sep 23 23:06:09 pipewire[962]: [E][v4l2-utils.c:76 spa_v4l2_open()] v4l2: Cannot open '/dev/video1': 13, Permission denied

I decided to continue anyway and I opened up Google Chrome and enabled Pipewire here: chrome://flags/#enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer.

However, this time, instead of a black blank screen. I got a gray blank screen.

I'm guessing those Permission denied errors are maybe not good.

I also tried setting this, based off of the GNOME Mutter tutorial, https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Mutter/RemoteDesktop.

[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.mutter experimental-features
@as []
[~]$ gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['screen-cast', 'remote-desktop']"
[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.mutter experimental-features
['screen-cast', 'remote-desktop']
[~]$

But, it didn't help.

Last edited by 1ptb3b (2019-09-24 06:25:07)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,740

Re: google-chrome and firefox black screen google hangout screenshare

Try in chromium, it's not guaranteed that chrome is compiled with pipewire support.

1ptb3b

Member

Registered: 2017-01-17

Posts: 76

Re: google-chrome and firefox black screen google hangout screenshare

Hm. Tried Chromium, enabled Pipewire in chrome://flags.

[~]$ chromium --version
Chromium 77.0.3865.90 Arch Linux

Same gray blank screen.

otto_simpson

Member

Registered: 2012-07-29

Posts: 10

Re: google-chrome and firefox black screen google hangout screenshare

Hm. Tried Chromium, enabled Pipewire in chrome://flags.

[~]$ chromium --version
Chromium 77.0.3865.90 Arch Linux

Same gray blank screen.

you should have a opened window of "Share Screen" when started hangout shared screen. Something like this:

as long as you don't select the device and "share" the Hangout screen will remain gray.

Remember that you need to have all the settings made for Pipewire. In may case I have:

$ chromium --version
Chromium 80.0.3987.163 Arch Linux

$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
wayland

$ pacman -Qs pipewire
local/libpipewire02 0.2.7-1
    User space API to deal with multimedia pipelines (0.2)
local/pipewire 0.3.2-1
    Server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines
local/pipewire-pulse 0.3.2-1
    Server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines (PulseAudio support)

$ pacman -Qs xdg-desktop-portal
local/xdg-desktop-portal 1.6.0-2
    Desktop integration portals for sandboxed apps
local/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk 1.6.0-4
    A GTK+ backend for xdg-desktop-portal


$ systemctl --user status pipewire.service
● pipewire.service - Multimedia Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-04-06 15:57:50 -03; 31min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
   Main PID: 1255 (pipewire)
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/pipewire.service
             ├─1255 /usr/bin/pipewire
             └─1263 exec pipewire-media-session


$ systemctl --user status pipewire.socket  
● pipewire.socket - Multimedia System
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.socket; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-04-06 15:57:50 -03; 31min ago
   Triggers: ● pipewire.service
     Listen: /run/user/1000/pipewire-0 (Stream)
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/pipewire.socket

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