chromium fails on ubuntu yet succeeds on debian why?
220322
If I start a fresh node of Debian 10 with only ufw and chromium I can ssh into linode Debian 10 from a windows client and xforward chromium to my laptop with no additional effort.
If I start a fresh node of ubuntu 16.04lts or 20.04lts with only ufw and chromium I have never been able to ssh into linode ubuntu 16.04lts or 20.04lts from a windows client and xforward chromium to my laptop successfully.
I have been trying for a few months reading on snapcraft, tweeking the ssh scripts, reading on ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(1386)] Unable to open X display, reading on xorg and others, reading on file descriptors, etc. Reading through core dumps. I have been all over the place.
I have not been able to find viable answers maybe because not many are asked from the view of ssh from windows client into a linux os or this view is not always clear.
I wonder if any of the linode server images have been modified from the image offered at the distribution's source. I read up on the difference between these two distributions but I have found no side by side comparison just what basic usage one might expect out of these.
When I talk about side by side comparison I mean in comparing the functionality between these distros is the Xserver capablity on Debian different than on Ubuntu. Will I need to install additional functionality on the Ubuntu os to allow this to work. Is this functionality on debian missing from the Ubuntu or not set-up the same way.
Is the snap not able to configure this view/ windows client ssh to Ubuntu?
I am not sure how I should state this. There have been too many possibilties presented to me that if I tried to state them all this post would be much longer; and, this post should then be broken into many smaller post to remain on topic.
How exactly can I get over this hump?
I am gonna go and manually download then install chromium on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 in the mean time.
Thanks for your time in advance!
7 Replies
✓ Best Answer
With all of Canonical's flip-flops on their "future-proof" display server in the last several years, you may not have installed/started the X Server that Chromium requires.
-- sw
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-core
This got the browser to display with a major drawback. It is extremely slow! As an example the letters I type display at increments about 15 seconds apart. The putty terminal reads with all kinds of errors with the last of the set reading something about stack smashing.
That is alright, I did not need a working browser; I am here learning the linux system and I got a piece of that today.
I edit this post here to make this statement a few hours after this reply.
I shut-down/restart this laptop and started again the ssh to linode server ubuntu 18.04 and run the chromium-browser command and I am impressed! The latency between here and the node server is so slight and the page load time is blazing fast. I have cox mid tier plan and it is not as impressive.
The errors displayed on putty reached a peak and have not been growing, though there is a number of them; but, this was true of debian 10 also.
Thanks for the response, just wanted to let you know I have not been able to respond since you reply. Thanks again!
Using any kind of display server (on your local machine) with a program generating a display on a remote VM is going to be painful at best. The latency is going to be really high (as you already know).
You would not believe the amount of traffic between an X server and it's clients. It's improved over the years but it's still very high (as opposed to say, HTTP or SMTP).
If you're intent on learning Linux, the command-line is the way to go.
-- sw
@stevewi
Yes about command line, that is my intent. My goal is to get selenium up and running but my interest in having a graphical browser is for testing/ observing things or just to see how things are getting along in the browser.
…but my interest in having a graphical browser is for testing/ observing things or just to see how things are getting along in the browser.
You don't really need a browser on your Linode to do this. You need a web server but the browser can run on your laptop. I don't even have X or any of it's associated software installed on my Linode. I zealously eschew installation of any packages that required those things…mostly because of the gargantuan amount of disc space all that stuff sucks up.
-- sw
You need a web server but the browser can run on your laptop. I don't even have X or any of it's associated software installed on my Linode,
That is interesting and definitely is the way to go. I will start searching for "How to's" on what ever I can think of that leads me down this path, Can you make any suggestions, good reads, other communities, groups?
Thanks so much! I could have continued as I have and wasted too much time.
