Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

emacsomancer · 2014-11-17 03:03:01

I am no longer to open either Chrome or Chromium (as a normal user), though I can get them to open as root. Trying to open either one from the commandline produces no output: no errors or anything useful - they simply never open.

I am able to open them as root, however. Could it be a gtk issue of some sort? I tried moving .gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0 to other locations (i.e. to restore a default gtk setup), but that didn't seem to make a difference. I've also tried moving ~/.config/chromium to a different location. None of this seems to make a difference.

(I've also tried reinstalling chromium and google-chrome, and downgrading chromium to earlier versions. None of this had any effect.)

I'm rather perplexed.

drcouzelis · 2014-11-19 18:31:37

Something must have changed... Chromium was updated on 2014-11-14, so I'm inclined to think that the problem is related to that.

You did a really good job trying different solutions. If Chromium will run as root then it shouldn't be an installation or dependency issue. The symptoms instead really seem to point to it being a permissions issue.

Some random website hinted that the problem might be related to a webcam. Do you have a webcam? Can you disable it? Will Chromium now work? If root has permissions to the webcam but a regular user doesn't then that might affect something...

Also, is this you? http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions … ormal-user

emacsomancer · 2014-11-19 23:47:30

I don't have a webcam (it's a desktop computer with no connected webcam).

Assuming it is a permissions problem (I think it must be - I have an almost identical setup on my work computer, which is running fine, so I don't think it's gtk or anything like that) - how do I go about fixing it? The strace output didn't help me much (yes, that's me on the unix/linux stackexchange). I tried forcing pacman to reinstall all dependencies of Chromium, which also didn't help.

drcouzelis · 2014-11-19 23:53:03

I'm out of ideas for now, but I did notice that a new version of Chromium was JUST updated in Arch Linux.

Good luck!

emacsomancer · 2014-11-19 23:58:29

drcouzelis wrote:

I'm out of ideas for now, but I did notice that a new version of Chromium was JUST updated in Arch Linux.
Good luck!

Thanks. Yeah, I noticed that too and updated - but, unfortunately, no change....

Scimmia · 2014-11-20 00:04:32

~/.cache/chromium problem?

emacsomancer · 2014-11-20 00:16:37

Scimmia wrote:

~/.cache/chromium problem?

No, unfortunately not. I had tried that.

Scimmia · 2014-11-20 00:17:27

Try creating a totally new user, see if that user can run it.

emacsomancer · 2014-11-20 00:21:07

Scimmia wrote:

Try creating a totally new user, see if that user can run it.

Yes, I tried that. The new user can't run either.

Scimmia · 2014-11-20 00:25:04

Anything odd about your setup? fat32 /home partition, umask change, etc?

emacsomancer · 2014-11-20 00:31:56

Scimmia wrote:

Anything odd about your setup? fat32 /home partition, umask change, etc?

I don't think so. I've got all ext4 file systems for all partitions. I haven't done anything with umask. The only thing which looks potentially odd to me - I'm used to seeing my normal user name and the group name on files as being the same (from other distros), but on my current setup, I don't seem to have a group with my username, and the group for files in home directory is listed variously as "users", "rfkill", "samba".

And, as far as I can tell, Chromium and Google Chrome are the only two applications which are not behaving normally. Conkeror, Firefox are running fine etc.

Last edited by emacsomancer (2014-11-20 00:45:31)

Scimmia · 2014-11-20 00:41:11

When you do useradd, it will automatically create a group with your username unless you specify a different group with the -g option. Sounds like there is definitely something strange with your user/group setup. Can I ask what the output of `id` is?

emacsomancer · 2014-11-20 00:44:29

Scimmia wrote:

When you do useradd, it will automatically create a group with your username unless you specify a different group with the -g option. Sounds like there is definitely something strange with your user/group setup. Can I ask what the output of `id` is?

uid=1000(MYUSERNAME) gid=100(users) groups=100(users),7(lp),10(wheel),95(storage),98(power),108(vboxusers),1001(printadmin),1002(lpadmin)

Though, I've been running like this for a few months.

I had followed a guide that suggested created a user like this:

useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power -s /bin/bash johndoe
passwd johndoe

Last edited by emacsomancer (2014-11-20 00:49:41)

Scimmia · 2014-11-20 00:48:25

So the user's gid is set properly (you just set it up with the "users" group instead of creating a new one), and all of the other group ID's look fine, so it's not a problem with the groups file. I'm starting to run out of ideas and have some other things I need to do. I'll come back if I can think of anything else.

emacsomancer · 2014-11-20 00:50:36

Scimmia wrote:

So the user's gid is set properly (you just set it up with the "users" group instead of creating a new one), and all of the other group ID's look fine, so it's not a problem with the groups file. I'm starting to run out of ideas and have some other things I need to do. I'll come back if I can think of anything else.

Thanks. I'm rather stumped on this myself.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-11-17 03:03:01

Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#2 2014-11-19 18:31:37

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#3 2014-11-19 23:47:30

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#4 2014-11-19 23:53:03

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#5 2014-11-19 23:58:29

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#6 2014-11-20 00:04:32

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#7 2014-11-20 00:16:37

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#8 2014-11-20 00:17:27

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#9 2014-11-20 00:21:07

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#10 2014-11-20 00:25:04

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#11 2014-11-20 00:31:56

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#12 2014-11-20 00:41:11

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#13 2014-11-20 00:44:29

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#14 2014-11-20 00:48:25

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

#15 2014-11-20 00:50:36

Re: Suddenly, neither Chrome nor Chromium will start (as normal user)

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