Chromium Browser keeps crashing after update

Question

I'm using Ubuntu Mate on Raspberry Pi 2.

While Chromium 48 did work fine, after updating to 51 it keeps crashing on start: it simply says Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Is there a way to get more information about what's happening in the background? How to fix the error?

Answer 1

I reinstalled previous, working, version of chromium-browser - not all that straightforward...

I had to apt-get remove ... and apt-get purge ... on both chromium-browser and chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra because when reinstalling the version numbers must match. then apt-get install ... on the two of them, appending the version number (the same for both):

apt-get install chromium-browser=45.0.2404.101-0ubuntu1.1201
apt-get install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra=45.0.2404.101-0ubuntu1.1201

it seems to work again. And BTW I got available version numbers by using apt-cache policy chromium-browser

Update 2:

Seems version 45.0.2404.101-0ubuntu1.1201 has ssl certificate problems with some sites. so.... I followed the instructions on here [dead link] and all's well for now:

wget http://ports.ubuntu.com/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-browser-l10n_48.0.2564.82-0ubuntu0.15.04.1.1193_all.deb

wget http://ports.ubuntu.com/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-browser_48.0.2564.82-0ubuntu0.15.04.1.1193_armhf.deb

wget http://ports.ubuntu.com/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_48.0.2564.82-0ubuntu0.15.04.1.1193_armhf.deb

sudo dpkg -i chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_48.0.2564.82-0ubuntu0.15.04.1.1193_armhf.deb

sudo dpkg -i chromium-browser-l10n_48.0.2564.82-0ubuntu0.15.04.1.1193_all.deb chromium-browser_48.0.2564.82-0ubuntu0.15.04.1.1193_armhf.deb

Answer 2

I do not know much about Chromium but if you want to trace and find appropriate solution, this could be helpful.

"Segmentation fault" happened because the program crashed and at the same time core is dumped. By looking at its definition, it refers to printing or the copying to a more permanent medium (such as a hard disk ) the contents of random access memory ( RAM ) at one moment in time. One can think of it as a full-length "snapshot" of RAM.

To debug this, you need to enable to create core file: ulimit -c unlimited and check everything is set correct by ulimit -c unlimited and after it crashes you would see core.<process-pid-here> file. This is your core dumped file.

[ ...Likely cut n' pasted from: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22711917/1151724 or a common source... ]

To analyze this file, you need GDB tool and it would be already installed on your pi. you need several steps to debug this.

1- Find the directory where the corefile is generated.

2- Use ls -ltr command in the directory to find the latest generated corefile.

3- Load the corefile: gdb binary path of corefile

4- Then you can get the information using bt (backtrace) command.

5- To print the variables use print varibale-name or p varibale-name

6- To get any help on gdb use help option or use apropos search-topic

7- Use frame frame-number to go to desired frame number.

8- Use up n and down n commands to select frame n frames up and select frame n frames down respectively.

9- To stop gdb use quit or q.

This is the how you debug core file.