chromium-browser fails to start after upgrade to eoan

[ts]

did a distro upgrade to eoan through upon request of popup app in ubuntu today

restarted the system

tried starting chromium-browser from the "Run Application" (Alt-F2)

Chromium should have started, nothing happened.

Tried again from a shell:

$ chromium-browser
2019/10/24 22:07:56.441694 cmd_run.go:529: WARNING: XAUTHORITY environment value is not a clean path: "/misc/home/<username>/.Xauthority"
cannot perform operation: mount --rbind /home /tmp/snap.rootfs_gRwtXn//home: Permission denied

apt-get --purge remove chromium-browser
apt-get install chromium-browser

exits successfully, after exclaiming some stuff about some snap, but leaves me with

$ chromium-browser
2019/10/24 22:14:53.150401 cmd_run.go:529: WARNING: XAUTHORITY environment value is not a clean path: "/misc/home/<username>/.Xauthority"
cannot perform operation: mount --rbind /home /tmp/snap.rootfs_rkOYc1//home: Permission denied

Either the upgrade to eoan left my system broken, or chromium-browser is broken.

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 19.10
Release: 19.10

$ apt-cache policy chromium-browser
chromium-browser:
  Installed: 77.0.3865.120-0ubuntu1~snap1
  Candidate: 77.0.3865.120-0ubuntu1~snap1
  Version table:
 *** 77.0.3865.120-0ubuntu1~snap1 500
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: chromium-browser 77.0.3865.120-0ubuntu1~snap1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-19.20-generic 5.3.1
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-19-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: MATE
Date: Thu Oct 24 22:08:43 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-04-10 (197 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-MATE 19.04 "Disco Dingo" - Alpha amd64 (20190326.1)
Snap.ChromeDriverVersion:
 Error: command ['snap', 'run', 'chromium.chromedriver', '--version'] failed with exit code 1: 2019/10/24 22:08:56.371246 cmd_run.go:529: WARNING: XAUTHORITY environment value is not a clean path: "/misc/home/thorsten/.Xauthority"
 cannot perform operation: mount --rbind /home /tmp/snap.rootfs_6BAwdi//home: Permission denied
Snap.ChromiumVersion:
 Error: command ['snap', 'run', 'chromium', '--version'] failed with exit code 1: 2019/10/24 22:08:56.217828 cmd_run.go:529: WARNING: XAUTHORITY environment value is not a clean path: "/misc/home/thorsten/.Xauthority"
 cannot perform operation: mount --rbind /home /tmp/snap.rootfs_tHjxkD//home: Permission denied
SourcePackage: chromium-browser
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to eoan on 2019-10-24 (0 days ago)

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

In eoan chromium-browser is a transitional package that installs the chromium snap.

You hit an unsupported home directory setup, apparently: snapd assumes a home directory mounted under /home.

This is similar to bug #1849371, even though the error message is slightly different, and it fails at a different stage. I'll mark it a duplicate bug.

Quoting Zygmunt: « The limitation on HOME is well known and for now has no workaround other than to bind mount whatever custom home directory to /home/$LOGNAME. »

[ts (toto-23)]

Thanks Olivier,

I could imagine that you'll get several other bug reports where people do not see how the underlying problem relates to "Cannot run chromium as user www-data because home directory is /var/www" - but I guess the issue is the same.

Btw, I've been using Linux for over 25 years and I don't understand the quote you mention and why snapd would be chosen to manage standard packages, if it (apparently) is broken (at least somebody is working on a fix, according to "Zygmunt's quote", mentioning "_for now_ has no workaround"). Home directories commonly are mounted (at least in professional environments) and quite commonly linked into /home/, and there never has been any problem with this, to the contrary, it solves many a headache (until now, as it seems). Feel free to send me back to old-fart-country where I came from, I'm just bothered by update-routines that break (standard!) environments.

If snap is broken and cannot deal with standard setups (this much I understand from the other bug and what I find in relation to "Zygmunt's quote"), may be it should be fixed before being included in the handling of standard packages?

OTOH, may be Ubuntu doesn't target professional environments. The solution of course is fine if the target audience are people who setup every new laptop from scratch and never work in networked environments (*scnr*).

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I understand your frustration, and I'm sorry this is breaking your workflow.
Be assured that this bug (and others reported against the chromium snap package) is a top priority.

The point of the transition of chromium-browser to a snap package in 19.10 is precisely to uncover this kind of problems early on, before the next LTS (20.04), and to ensure everything works smoothly by then. I'd suggest you stick to the current LTS for professional environments if this problem is unacceptable.

[ts (toto-23)]

Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Michael (3-ueuntu-4)]

I don't think that its the same cause...

Got the same problem on 20.04 LTS. Btw, Debian sid manages to get chromium packged as a normal deb as well...

This is not really an advertisement for snap as it doesn't manage such simple applications like a browser...