[unified] Severe usability issues on the unified build

[markozajc]

For the past hour I've been trying to get my extensions to work on UGC 94.0.4606.81 to work on Debian Bookworm. So far I've bumped into:

• Webpages not loading at all unless HTTPs and uBlock Origin are disabled
• uMatrix broke completely, reinstalling it fixed it, but it hangs and goes back to the broken state whenever I try to restore the settings. If I apply rules little by little (I have about 4k of them), it hangs on about 2k and doesn't take any more.
• KeePassXC-Browser randomly not connecting to the database
• 'Load unpacked' in chrome://extensions randomly not working

None of these issues have been present in 93 (or 94 on Flatpak (and likely elsewhere as well) as it turns out).

[gcvl]

For the past hour I've been trying to get my extensions to work on UGC 94.0.4606.81 to work on Debian Bookworm. So far I've bumped into:

• Webpages not loading at all unless HTTPs and uBlock Origin are disabled

Same here on Bullseye.

[sagarvora]

I have the same issue on Ubuntu Focal. Any pointers on how to downgrade?

[markozajc]

@sagarvora I don't think OBS keeps an archive of releases, but I could be wrong. Your best bet would probably be checking out the commit for 93 in this repository (not sure which and on which branch), and building it manually.

[awsms]

No page will load for me, even after disabling every single extension. Using Mint 20

edit: works after relaunching the browser twice.

[gadall]

I'm seeing various browser operations hang, it can be midway while loading a web page, installing or updating an extension, or clearing the cache. At first after starting the browser I can open a page or two and as soon as something gets stuck, subsequent operations hang indefinitely, such as attempting to load a new page, etc., at some point pages don't even begin to load at all anymore. Indeed disabling all extensions doesn't seem to make everything work properly.

[markozajc]

I've observed similar symptoms here too. The browser hung and wouldn't respond anymore after resuming from STR, and generally acted very unresponsive. Could this be an issue with the new memory allocator?

[sagarvora]

I think the new unified build isn't working as expected. Perhaps someone can try the Flatpak to see if the issue persists

[markozajc]

@sagarvora It looks like the release from Flatpak doesn't have these problems (which probably means they're also localized to this project, not ungoogled-chromium in general). I've tried installing uMatrix on a new profile and importing my ruleset on both:

• Flatpak: installed the extension (unpacked), and imported and committed the ruleset without problems
• Debian: took two tries to install the extension, hung when importing the ruleset

There's definitely something up with the unified build.

[gadall]

Tried with a brand new profile (rm -rf rm -rf .cache/chromium/*; mv .config/chromium .config/chromium-1) and so far it seems to be working. Opening several tabs in several windows, and installed one extension (Proxy SwitchyOmega, hard to live without in this ehhm particular country) and so far so good. The only problem I've noticed so far was in the chrome://extensions/ page, it's just erratic, I had to repeatedly try several methods to install the extensions ("Developer Mode" enabled) and it suddenly just worked by dragging and dropping the .crx file, on the n'th attempt.

[markozajc]

Tried with a brand new profile (rm -rf rm -rf .cache/chromium/*; mv .config/chromium .config/chromium-1) and so far it seems to be working. Opening several tabs in several windows, and installed one extension (Proxy SwitchyOmega, hard to live without in this ehhm particular country) and so far so good. The only problem I've noticed so far was in the chrome://extensions/ page, it's just erratic, I had to repeatedly try several methods to install the extensions ("Developer Mode" enabled) and it suddenly just worked by dragging and dropping the .crx file, on the n'th attempt.

Did not work for me with uMatrix, same issue as before.

[gadall]

Now I tried adding uBlock Origin and everything immediately stopped working. Disabling it on the chrome://extensions/ page immediately made the pending page loads go ahead and complete. This is on the fresh profile, better result than on my exisiting one.

[gadall]

And, it's rapidly degrading. At this point (uBlock Origin disabled) some specific pages consistently hang halfway while loading.

[a-kriya]

@markozajc Anything we can do to help figure out the issue here? What are the differences with the Flatpak build in configuration?

[markozajc]

@a-kriya I'm not a maintainer.

[a-kriya]

@markozajc My bad.

@braewoods Are you going to be able to help with this? Is there any other member of @ungoogled-software that we can bring this in attention of?

[ghost]

@a-kriya You're asking me an impossible question. I don't even know what's causing this. And I don't know chromium that well to even know where to begin to look. All I can guess is it's something to do with packaging differences.

[awsms]

@a-kriya not the first time debian builds are f*cked up, there was another severe issue in a recent build (where the browser would randomly crash). you have to ask this to debian chromium's maintainers ([email protected]).

[markozajc]

@awsms I believe ungoogled-chromium-debian doesn't take from debian's downstream since 94.

[ghost]

That is correct now. I am currently seeing if Chromium 95 helps at all before looking at the packaging again.

[ghost]

I am currently building Chromium 95 on OBS testing repository. I'll see if there's any new build breakage.

[ghost]

On the bright side seems Impish is finally working now.

[ghost]

I speak too soon. Still some kind of build issue with Impish. I've sent an updated build to OBS after fixing build failure with Sid.

[ghost]

I'll do a manual build of Impish since OBS still isn't working currently.

[ghost]

Ok. I just tagged chromium 95 since it works well enough to build. Let me know if the problem is still present. If it is I'll look into some other things I haven't tried yet.

[ghost]

Also if anyone cares to try their hand at fixing it I'm willing to review PRs.

[awsms]

@braewoods: will the v95 builds be available on opensuse repo any time soon for other distros as well? (if you're the one managing it)

[ghost]

Whenever OBS gets around to building them. x86_64 is still delayed by lack of available workers.

[markozajc]

I have built the package manually on my system, and it seems that upgrading to Chromium 95 did not resolve the issues.

[ghost]

Ok, can you document your exact process for reproducing it from a fresh profile? I need something to test against if I am going to get anywhere.

[markozajc]

Firstly:

1. Download and extract uMatrix: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/releases/download/1.4.4/uMatrix_1.4.4.chromium.zip
2. Download 5000 dummy uMatrix rules: https://files.zajc.eu.org/unlist/5000-rules.txt

After you're done, run Chromium

1. Head to chrome://extensions/
2. Enable 'Developer mode'
3. Click 'Load unpacked'
4. Select your unextracted uMatrix directory
5. If the extension doesn't show up, click 'Load unpacked' again and exit out of the file selection prompt (for some reason it won't install the extension unless you do that, that's another bug that doesn't occur on the Flatpak release)
6. Click 'Details' on the uMatrix extension card
7. Scroll down and click 'Extension options'
8. Click the 'My Rules' tab
9. Do one of the following

• Click 'Import from file'

1. Select the '5000-rules.txt' file
2. Nothing happens, yet the file should be imported

• Copy and paste '5000-rules.txt' into the right textbox

1. Click 'Save'
2. If you get past the initial hang, click 'Commit'
3. Browser hangs.