Chromium

From ArchWiki
Revision as of 19:14, 20 January 2013 by Bluerider (Talk | contribs) (→‎Flash Player)

Jump to: navigation, search

Template:Article summary start Template:Article summary text Template:Article summary heading Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary end Chromium is an open source graphical web browser from Google, based on the WebKit rendering engine.

Installation

Chromium can be installed with the package chromium, available in the official repositories.

In the AUR you can also find:

  • chromium-devAUR - a development version of the Chromium browser.
  • chromium-updateAUR - an update. script for Chromium nighly builds, pre-compiled on the Chromium buildbot server.
  • chromium-browser-binAUR - a binary version of the latest Chromium build.
  • iron-binAUR - a binary version of Chromium without Google's 'tracking features'
Note: Compiling chromium-devAUR takes at least as long as compiling the Linux kernel.

Various versions of the modified Google Chrome browser can be found in the AUR:

See these two articles for an explanation of the differences between Stable/Beta/Dev, as well as Chromium vs. Chrome and the version numbers.

Configuration

File associations

Unlike Firefox, Chromium does not maintain its own database of mimetype-to-application associations. Instead, it relies on xdg-open to open files and other mime types, for example, magnet links.

There are exceptions to this rule though. In the case of mailto URIs, Chromium calls out to xdg-email which is similar to xdg-open. Other protocol handlers may have equivalent scripts so check /usr/bin/xdg*.

The behaviour of xdg-* tools is managed automatically in environments such as GNOME, KDE, Xfce or LXDE, but does not work in others. Usually this behaviour can be fixed by tricking them into thinking that they are operating in one of the supported desktop environments. Depending on your environment one may work and another will not so trying each is recommended. You can set the desktop environment with the following variable: 

export DE=INSERT_DE_HERE

where the recognised desktop environments are: gnome, kde, xfce and lxde. For the variable to be always set, put it somewhere like ~/.xinitrc or ~/.bashrc.

An alternative is to edit the xdg-open or xdg-email scripts and hard-code a useful DE. At the bottom of the file you will see something like this: 

/usr/bin/xdg-open
detectDE

if [ x"$DE" = x"" ]; then
    DE=generic
fi

DEBUG 2 "Selected DE $DE"

# if BROWSER variable is not set, check some well known browsers instead
if [ x"$BROWSER" = x"" ]; then
    BROWSER=links2:elinks:links:lynx:w3m
    if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]; then
        BROWSER=x-www-browser:firefox:seamonkey:mozilla:epiphany:konqueror:chromium-browser:google-chrome:$BROWSER
    fi
fi

case "$DE" in
    kde)
    open_kde "$url"
    ;;

    gnome*)
    open_gnome "$url"
    ;;

    mate)
    open_mate "$url"
    ;;

    xfce)
    open_xfce "$url"
    ;;

    lxde)
    open_lxde "$url"
    ;;

    generic)
    open_generic "$url"
    ;;

    *)
    exit_failure_operation_impossible "no method available for opening '$url'"
    ;;
esac

change the third line: DE=generic to one of the supported desktop environments (e.g. DE=gnome).

Note: These changes are lost when any of the utilities are upgraded.

An approach which is less useful is to place the required application in the default browser list: 

   BROWSER=links2:links:lynx:w3m
   if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]; then
       BROWSER=firefox:mozilla:epiphany:konqueror:chromium-browser:google-chrome:$BROWSER
   fi

xdg-open and xdg-email fall back to this list of browsers and will use the first that they find to attempt to open the URI. You could add the name of the application to the beginning of the list. However there is no guarantee that the application will be called correctly to meet your needs, e.g. your mail client will open but it will not correctly receive the mailto address. Also it will only work for one application.

A fourth option is to make a softlink from your preferred application to one of the names on the browser list. This approach has the same problems as the previous work around. For more discussion on these ideas see this forum thread.

Font Rendering

Chromium is now supposed to use the settings in ~/.fonts.conf, though you may have to edit it manually (see Font Configuration). If your fonts setting are stored in another place, create ~/.fonts.conf and add these lines: 

~/.fonts.conf
 <match target="font">
    <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
    <edit name="hinting" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
    <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
      <const>hintslight</const>
    </edit>
  </match>

If the fonts are still rendered badly, you can use Xft settings as suggested here. Create ~/.Xresources if it does not exist and add in: 

~/.Xresources
...
! Xft settings ---------------------------------------------------------------
Xft.dpi:        96
Xft.antialias:  true
Xft.rgba:       rgb
Xft.hinting:    true
Xft.hintstyle:  hintslight
...

Then update the X Resources database using: 

xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
Note: These settings will affect any application that uses X Resources for font settings; one example is rxvt-unicode.

Non-Latin characters

Install needed fonts to correctly display Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters. For examples of recommended fonts for various languages see Font Packages.

Default browser

The simplest way to make Chromium the default browser is to set variable $BROWSER=chromium in ~/.profile 

if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]; then
     BROWSER=chromium
fi

To test if this was applied successfully, try to open an URL with xdg-open as follows: 

$ xdg-open http://google.com/

If everything went well, either a new tab inside Chromium, or a new window would open and display the Google homepage, depending on your settings.

Another option, when using mimeoAUR, is to associate "http://" links with Chromium: 

~/.config/mimeo.conf
/usr/bin/chromium
  ^http://

If all of that still does not get it working, you can try adding the following to the [Added Associations] list in ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list: 

x-scheme-handler/http=chromium.desktop

For more info, see Xdg-open.

Flash Player

The Adobe Flash plugin can be installed with the package flashplugin, available in the official repositories.

While the classic Flash plugin will not be updated for Linux, Chromium can use the Flash plugin from Google Chrome (that uses the new Pepper API). This plugin is available in the AUR with the chromium-pepper-flashAUR or chromium-pepper-flash-stableAUR packages.

Note: Make sure to enable the Flash plugin with location /usr/lib/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so in chrome://plugins and disable the plugin with location /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.

If Pepper Flash doesn't show up in the plugins list (as is the case for Iron) then disable libflashplayer.so and start with the following command. 

iron --ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so --ppapi-flash-version=11.5.31.101

Enable only one flash player at a time by going to http://about:plugins -> details -> Adobe Flash Player

Google Play & Flash

DRM content on Flash still requires HAL to play. This is readily apparent with Google Play Movies. If one attempts to play a Google Play movie without HAL, they will receive a youtube like screen but the video will not play.

Note : Chromium-pepper-flash doesn't work with this method, the user must ensure they are using flashplugin.

As per "Watching movies from Google Play on Arch Linux"; install halAUR and hal-infoAUR. Then run the following bash code : 

cd ~/.adobe/Flash_Player;                       ## enter the adobe Flash player directory
rm -rf NativeCache AssetCache APSPrivateData2;  ## remove cache

Start the HAL daemon and one will be able to watch Google Play Movie content. 

# systemctl start hal.service

Alternately one can just save the following bash script below and run it before they want to watch Google Play Movie content. 

#!/bin/bash

## written by Mark Lee <bluerider>
## using information from <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chromium#Google_Play_.26_Flash>

## Start and stop Hal service on command for Google Play Movie service

function main () {  ## run the main insertion function
clear-cache;  ## remove adobe cache
start-hal;  ## start the hal daemon
read -p "Press 'enter' to stop hal";  ## pause the command line with a read line
stop-hal;  ## stop the hal daemon
}

function clear-cache () {  ## remove adobe cache
cd ~/.adobe/Flash_Player;  ## go to Flash player user directory
rm -rf NativeCache AssetCache APSPrivateData2;  ## remove cache
}

function start-hal () {  ## start the hal daemon
sudo systemctl start hal.service && ( ## systemd : start hal daemon
 echo "Started hal service..."
 ) || (
 echo "Failed to start hal service!"
 ) 
}

function stop-hal () {  ## stop the hal daemon
sudo systemctl stop hal.service && (  ## systemd : stop hal daemon
 echo "Stopped hal service..."
 ) || (
 echo "Failed to stop hal service!"
 )
}

main;  ## run the main insertion function

Open PDF files inside Chromium

There are multiple ways of enabling PDF support in Chromium that are detailed below.

Using Google Chrome's libpdf

libpdf is Google's own implementation of a PDF renderer. While compatible, it is currently only part of Chrome releases, not Chromium ones.

The easiest way to add it to the latter is using one of the packages provided in the AUR:

To do it manually, download a Google Chrome release that corresponds to the version of Chromium you use: 

$ wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
$ wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb

$ wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
$ wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-unstable_current_amd64.deb

Extract the deb file with 

$ ar vx <deb-file>

Extract LZMA archive with 

$ tar -xJf <lzma-file>

Move libpdf.so from opt/google/chrome/ to the appropriate directory as stated above. A change of its file permissions and ownership may be necessary (the permission of libpdf.so should be 755).

To verify that the installation went correctly: start Chromium, open about:plugins and check if "Chrome PDF Viewer" is available (it may need to be enabled).

Note: As a new version of Chromium will not update libpdf.so, it may become incompatible. Thus and with respect to possible security fixes it is advisable to update both at the same time.

Using mozplugger

Template:Box

For information about the installation see Browser Plugins#PDF viewer.

Using the KParts plugin

Template:Box

Certificates

Chromium uses NSS for the certificate management. Certificates can be managed (including added) by going to Settings, clicking the Show advanced settings.. link and then Manage Certificates.

Tips and Tricks

Template:Box

Troubleshooting

Proxy Settings

There have been many situations in which proxy settings do not work properly, especially if set through the KDE interface. A good method as of now is to use Chromium's command-line options, like --proxy-pac-url and --proxy-server, to set your proxy.

Default profile

If you cannot get your default profile when you try to run Chromium and get a similar error instead: 

$ chromium
[2630:2630:485325611:FATAL:chrome/browser/browser_main.cc(755)] Check failed: profile. 
Cannot get default profile. Trace/breakpoint trap

you have to set the correct owner of the directory ~/.config/chromium as following: 

$ sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusergroup /home/yourusername/.config/chromium

WebGL

Sometimes, Chromium will disable WebGL with certain graphics card configurations. This can generally be remedied by typing about:flags into the URL bar and enabling the WebGL flag. You may also enable WebGL by passing the command line flag --enable-webgl to Chromium in the terminal.

There is also the possibility that your graphics card has been blacklisted by Chromium. To override this, pass the flag --ignore-gpu-blacklist when starting Chromium, alternatively, go to about:flags and enable Override software rendering list.

Pulseaudio & PA-Alsa-Bridge & Pepper-Flash

Given a certain version of Chrome (23.x seem to exhibit this problem) and Pepper-Flash (11.x) while using the PA-Alsa-Bridge, sound may not play, become distorted, start skipping or outright keep crashing the PA-Alsa-Bridge continously. See [1] for the bugreport.

A possible workaround is to use pasuspender to suspend Pulseaudio and force Chrome to use Alsa directly.

First, create an ~/.asoundrc file to default Alsa to your real hardware instead of Pulseaudio. See Alsa and [2] for more information. Exemplary ~/.asoundrc: 

~/.asoundrc
pcm. !default {
    type hw
    card 0
    device 0
}

Then use pasuspender to suspend Pulseaudio and force Chrome to use Alsa which now uses your real hardware. 

pasuspender -- google-chrome

The problem might be related to the tsched=0 option in Pulseaudio. See Pulseaudio#Glitches, skips or crackling and comment #27 in [3].

See Also

Retrieved from "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Chromium&oldid=244591"