Notices

THIS FIRST POST IS UPDATED AND I ADD TO THIS THE LATEST INSTRUCTIONS OF RUNNING CHROMIUM 57 ON N900!

Here are instructions to get 0day wholes having chromium 57 browser to be installed on N900 if you really need it (as I do for whatsapp and instagram).

WARNING: PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS OF USING FIREJAIL WITH CHROMIUM HAVE BEEN REMOVED CAUSE KERNEL DOESN'T SUPPORT FIREJAIL FULLY. ALSO IT MAY BE THAT THERE IS NO SECURITY BENEFITS OF USING CHROMIUM IN KIOSK MODE.

After installing jessie on ED from the link in this instruction page

https://wiki.maemo.org/Easy_Debian/L..._Debian_Jessie

by juiceme go Debian Chroot and:

apt-get update

groupadd crontab

- Otherwise for me it throws "unknown user group in statoverride" error and prevents from installing. I searched a lot about it and there are different possibilities to resolve it. Most common is to remove /var/lib/dpkg/statoverride and some say also to remove the /var/lib/dpkg/lock. Some instructed to search for a certain line with crontab and remove that only. But it was said that the securest way is to add the groub crontab with groupadd to prevent from harming the system. I have decided to follow that cause have had so many problems and not know if some were because of removing the whole statoverride. If there is a better solution let me know.

apt-get install ca-certificates openssl libcurl3

Next one (installing netsurf with the instructions by juiceme) is optional but because I do not know if this added something which made chromium work better I install it first. Installing after chromium did not work at least once.

Follow the instructions of getting and and installing netsurf from juiceme.

https://wiki.maemo.org/Easy_Debian/L..._Debian_Jessie

apt-get install leafpad (or use what ever you prefer and is better)

leafpad /etc/apt/sources.list


Add to sources and save if you need for something firejail sandbox. Don't use it with chromium. It doesn't add security but may even weaken it with chromiums own sandbox preferences.To use it with chromium was just an idea which didn't carry far.

deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-backports main

apt-get update

apt-get install -t jessie-backports firejail


And now to installing Chromium:

apt-get install apt-transport-https

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d

Get mavericks jessie repository list for odroid:

wget https://oph.mdrjr.net/meveric/source...ssie-main.list

- There is also a list for mavericks jessie-backports where some may find usefull stuff for some things but atleast once when I tried to install chromium the backports list enabled I got lots of dependency errors and couldn't anymore install chromium. I also tried installing it from official jessie backports which was also a mistake and had to reinstall image cause didn't know how to fix things. So get for this only jessie main list.

wget -O- http://oph.mdrjr.net/meveric/meveric.asc | apt-key add -

apt-get update

apt-get install chromium-browser-odroid

Now if you know how to get N900 keyboard work properly on jessie do that (probably with Xbindkeys fix icon and instructions on ED wiki, I haven't got that part working yet).

Close Debian Chroot and fire up LXDE desktop.

- Now if you have overclocked and made swap adjustments I suggest to change the max cpu to 805 and change swap to default settings except maybe the echo "30" > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness. I have CSSU devel, Kernel Power 53 and had overclocked to 900 and had swappolube proposed settings and they worked well untill firing up chromium. Then device booted.

Start chromium either from Run or from the menu.

- It should be in menu if you installed jessie by putting the right path in /home/user/.chroot. ED finds and uses the image from MyDocs even without the path but there are some things which do not work.

Let chromium open up and do not try to use it before you see the cpu meter showing low. Do not just look and wait but do something, read or have a coffee. It takes couple of minutes the couple first times and untill you have made the right settings. Then it will work about like iceweasel.

After it has loaded shut the chromium. This was needed only for chromium to make right files. Not sure if the next one is neccessary or is sulu image such that the rights are not that restricted but according to Easy Debbie wiki instruction page you need to give chromium access to here in chroot:

chown -R user /home/user/.cache/chromium

chown -R user /home/user/.config/chromium

Now it should be certain that your settings stick. Open chromium again (and wait and wait untill cpu is down) and then adjust settings. When you get settings open bookmark it with SET (short name).

VERY IMPORTANT SETTING:

Change the page where chromium opens to chrome://chrome-urls

Change that to be also the home button page.

Chromium opens much faster and it is usefull to have a very light page under home button.

Show bookmarks bar (you need it).

Make a user

Then go to content settings and bookmark that too with short name.

Disable images (for now)

Disable flash always (and for good)

Disable microphone, camera, and everything else you want. I also disabled programs to do anything after closing.

After this it is maybe good thing to make what ever magic you do to free ram on your device. Open chromium this time from run with 'firejail chromium'. Then google data saver chrome (could not find it from webstore otherwise) and click the link you find. First time webstore loads longer, next times it's ok.

Install data saver and click the icon to start it.

Google xtab and do the same as with data saver. When xtab is installed click the icon, click the arrow on the box to change open pages and then select more in the bottom. Type 2 on the box. Otherwise you will soon loose the game with chromium making extra processes for each tab.

Now you may click settings from bookmark bar and go to clear cache/browsing. When you get there bookmark that too with short name. Clear your history.

If you want to try to make it work even better you may try using chrome://flags. I tried almost everything but can't really say what would really work. One friend once said that the more flags you put the more the browser needs to read settings for each page when opening. It seemed that way with this N900. In internet you can find with 'flags for faster chrome' or 'reduce ram with flags on chrome'. I decided not to use them after all. Should be a proper machine with monitoring enabled to really see effects on ram and cpu and loading times before using.


Using chromium without LXDE desktop

You can launch chromium straight from xterm in Hildon with 'debbie chromium'.

There comes also all kinds of errors when you launch it like this. If you know and find out how to make chromium to work the same way as netsurf does when launched from chroot (right sized window, able to write and click stuff well, no errors) then pliiz tell me.

For now when you launch it you can click stuff and get them opened but you can't write unless you first press shutdown button and when the menu appears click somewhere in chromium to make it disappear and then you can type. But then to be able to click some things you need to exit the ED with ctrl backspace and then come back. And for some things (as editing xtab from icon menu) you just can't make it work.

One workaround is that when chrome is launched from LXDE install chrome input tools. You can there select languages and then you can use virtual keyboard without need to all the time change mode when chromium is launched from xterm. Chromium is much faster when launched from xterm.

Launching chromium to kiosk mode. It may give some performance benefits. About adding security it may give nothing extra.

In terminal type:

debbie chromium --kiosk http://www.google.com

Put whatever webpage url, both http and https works. Can be used also from the Run box in LXDE start menu.

It will open a maximized window without any chromium settings top bar which are not in use in kiosk mode. You (the user) can't use them (not sure how it is with what webpage can or can't in this mode).

Any help on this matter (getting chromium to work better) is welcomed!

ALERT AND CAUTION: USE THIS BROWSER ONLY TO ACCESS CERTAIN PLACES YOU OTHERWISE YET CAN'T WITH N900!!!

THIS POST IS OLDER THAT THE FIRST POST ON THIS THREAD AND JUST DESCRIBES HOW I TRIED TO MAKE CHROMIUM WORK FIRST.

From this thread I started and there may be some usefull information to be found. I tried install it but didn't work.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/v...?f=63&t=121195

Then I found another thread and followed this path.

First added from this guy the jessie main repository to /etc/apt/sources.list

https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=5908

Then installed from there chromium-browser-odroid

https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12350
installing chromium-browser-odroid

Opening chroot:

If you try to start it from debbie chroot with just chromium it says have to add --no-sandbox and then it opens it to own window without lxde desktop and to developer mode. But it wont work well and shows the top bar of hildon on top of the window. If you here open an incognito window the previous is left underneath and you should close it.

Opening through desktop:

Open debian desktop, open run and type chromium. It will show a box which says "Profile error occured and can't read your preferences". But it will open the google search page after long time. It is helpful to have a cpu diagram on the bottom of desktop to follow when it's done before continuing.

The search works, preferences opens and can be changed but I think they are not saved. When you open chromium chroot you see all kinds of errors which should probably be fixed.

Also was able to search from webstore but when tried to add extension (Ublock addblocker to help pages to load) it was unable to unzip the package.

I managed to open one newspaper (www.il.fi) but with the heavier one (www.is.fi) it first shows the news but when the loading continues it in the end fails with a window Aw, snap!

I tried to clear cache and use incognito window (as chromium suggested) but no difference. Also here in desktop if you open the incognito window the previous window stays behind and you should close it.

Also tried (as was said in the thread https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12350 by the builder) to start chromium with --use-gl=egl but it gives many errors of missing stuff (well seen when starting in chroot with that).

Some in that thread had managed to get chromium to work in odroid only after downgrading libnss3. So I tried to look for help to that and found this thread.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...rading-problem

Those instructions were too scary so search more and found this.

https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-dow...age-in-ubuntu/

As instructed there I did this sudo apt-cache showpkg libnss3 and stopped there my journey when saw mention of dependencies and libc6. I don't know what it is but it has been giving me grey hair and have made me to install debbie and jessie again many times. There always comes problems with libc6 when I try to install something. I have now working jessie with netsurf and I don't know how to save/make image of my present setup so I didn't try to downgrade libnss3 to see what happens.

I still searched for how to prevent package from upgrading again for future needs and found it from here.

https://www.ostechnix.com/3921-2/

In the end I used this to see the version of current libc6

sudo apt-cache show libc6 | grep Versio

But cause I don't understand these things it didn't give me any usefull knowledge.

I believe someone could know how to fix the errors and problems on this chromium, but I'm not sure how i could be get enough slim to work in N900. Addblocker would help loading the pages, but is there any extensions (or mods to about:config) to prevent pictures of downloading or downgrading their quality and what would be best: to have ability to load a certain picture on demand with low quality when needed.

Probably some of you guys know how to make a browser use less ram and run faster by adjusting the config (I tried to adjust microb or was it fennec with greasemonkey scripts and it was a disaster). But it would take probably a lot of time. Just wanted to share this experiment if someone likes to try and maybe try to get it work. I don't have extra swap and on another thread someone talked about watchdog configs to help to prevent freeze.

With this chromium needs a lot of patience and no extra apps or windows open.

News site that opened but wasn't really able to use scroll, just by clicking and giving time - a lot!

Makes you snap.

Climbing the tree from the wrong end. After six hours useless efforts of modding chromium settings underdstood that chromium does not have rights to write or read /home/user/.config. /.config I used chown -R user:users chromium and then deleted Web Data and Preferences folders and the first time access to chromium without error window. Have to see if could now get the settings to stay. Chrome://flags has many possibilities and about:config too. Probably will have success on ruining the whole browser but gonna try. I made to chromium a profile "LinuxNinja". The icon looks like the ninja in the C64 Bruce Lee which you can strike down easily but it just keeps coming back. Feeling that ninja with this chromium.

If anyone can help me with this: I would like to get chromium to open from choot terminal as netsurf does, straight to own window without LXDE desktop. Now it opens from there only as root, but only if I flag it with --no-sandbox. But then I don't have text input working at all in the browser. Have managed to make lots of setting mods but getting it run without desktop as a normal user would make probably a needed difference how it runs. Anyone?

Do not recommend testing the browser except for efforts to fix. Not usable as such.

You are treading in deep waters now, as I think nobody has tried these things yet. It is pretty much pushing the limits of the device.

Yes, I can feel the limits of this device. Waiting waiting with full cpu, page not responding, kill or wait? I'll wait, thank you. Chrome webstore loads like 5-10 minutes. But already installed Data Saver and One Tab extensions.

Almost a decade ago I was not patient enough to use IceWeasel on debian image.

You must be a very calm guy
And definitely admired (for your curiosity/efforts/endurance/...)

Firstly
Your post #2 here Maemish ...
in explaining what and how you did what you did...
is well done. Very...
So well done in fact, it could pretty much be used to retrace exactly what you did to achieve the results you got...
Also to be used as a platform for study from and extrapolate from, to get potentially ..other results.

Secondly, the dilemma with pushing chromium is that the demands of chromium and especially most sites nowadays...are just too heavy, too demanding ...for the n900 to handle.
Leaner browsers and methods of paring down the sites they visit so it doesn't overwhelm the n900 in question ...is a better answer.