chromium 79 remote display broken

[Mike Bernson]

Chromium 78 worked and things broke in version 79.

With chromium 79 when using the remote display (ssh for x forward) I get the display forward but only a blank (white) window. Chromiumn does not render anything into the window.

If I am at the console then every thing work normal. Also Firefox does work for remote display. It just chromium 79 that has this problem.

Every thing worked with version 78.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:18.04.36
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.0.0-37.40~18.04.1-generic 5.0.21
Uname: Linux 5.0.0-37-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.9
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Sun Dec 22 14:57:30 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-07-24 (1246 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160720)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: dist-upgrade
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-09-03 (475 days ago)
VarLogDistupgradeTermlog:

[cesare (cesare-redhat-bugs)]

Description of problem:

starting Chromium 79 (and also google-chrome-stable 79) through a ssh tunnel gives a blank (white) window. Actually it is possible to click on some buttons if one is able to locate them with the mouse without seeing them.

By Clicking on "Chromium Web Browser" in the top bar of the screen, it is possible to open a new window which is visible, but the window has not loaded any personal configuration (bookmarks, extensions etc.)

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
chromium-79.0.3945.79-1.fc31.x86_64

How reproducible: always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. ssh -X -f user@host "/usr/bin/chromium-browser"
2. a blank (white) window opens
3. click on "Chromium Web Browser" in the top bar of the screen and select "Open a New Window"
4. a normal (visible) chromium window opens, but all personal configuration (bookmarks, extensions etc.) is not loaded

Actual results:
a blank (white) window opens first, it is possible to open a second window but without all personal configuration (bookmarks, extensions etc.)

Expected results:
a visible window is opened and all personal configuration is loaded.

Additional info:
chromium 78 works fine (as it has always done) over an ssh tunnel.

See also https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/23330705?hl=en

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[tcallawa (tcallawa-redhat-bugs)]

You might want to open a bug with chromium upstream here:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list

The code diff between 78 and 79 is rather large, and I'm not sure where to even start digging into what would cause X11 forwarding to break.

[cesare (cesare-redhat-bugs)]

Upstream chromium bug "Issue 1026950: Regression: displaying over ssh forwarded X11 shows only grey window"

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1026950

according to this, the bug persists also in Google Chrome 80.0.3987.16 beta

[cesare (cesare-redhat-bugs)]

Workaround according to https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=949440

Bug seems to be related to MIT-SHM management

Works for me right now as follows:

- on the target machine install gcc and libX11-devel

- download XlibNoSHM.c from above link (at the bottom of the page)

- compile (always on target machine) with
    gcc -shared -fPIC -o XlibNoSHM.so XlibNoSHM.c

- start chrome from the client on the target machine with
   ssh -X -f user@target "LD_PRELOAD='libdl.so ./XlibNoSHM.so' /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable"

[cesare (cesare-redhat-bugs)]

The bug persists with google-chrome-stable-80.0.3987.87-1 , the above workaround still works.

[cesare (cesare-redhat-bugs)]

With google-chrome-stable-81.0.4044.129-1.x86_64 it is necessary to add also the option --no-sandbox which makes it quite unsafe to use.

[cesare (cesare-redhat-bugs)]

Just found another workaround, google-chrome-stable-81.0.4044.129-1.x86_64 starts with

ssh -X -f user@target "LD_PRELOAD='libdl.so ./XlibNoSHM.so' /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --use-gl=swiftshader"

as far as I understand, swiftshader is a "high-performance CPU-based implementation of the Vulkan and OpenGL ES graphics APIs, its goal is to provide hardware independence for advanced 3D graphics ... act as drop-in replacements for graphics drivers" (from GitHub) which could mean in some cases worse graphic performances.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Comments #11 and #12 in the upstream bug report (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1026950) have suggested workarounds.

[fedora-admin-xmlrpc (fedora-admin-xmlrpc-redhat-bugs)]

This package has changed maintainer in the Fedora.
Reassigning to the new maintainer of this component.