Iron 'portable' browser - now at 129.0.6550.0 - 64-bit ONLY (with updater!)

[mikewalsh]

Great job building version 108.xxx, Mike. Not only has the problem I emailed you about under Fossapup64-9.6 evaporated, but for the first time since version 93 Bionicpup64 can run the current Iron. I'm posting from F96 using Iron 108xxx now.

Version 108.xxx accepted the PROFILE from my prior Iron.

Just a FWIW, for anyone that's interested. I reminded myself of this just tonight.

If setting-up a new instance of any Chromium clone, there IS a quicker way to transfer bookmarks than messing about importing & re-arranging them again.

Find a 'clone' that's already set-up with all your bookmarks. Go into the profile->Default. Look for the text file called, simply, "Bookmarks". Copy this over to the profile of your new browser and drop it into the same location within the 'Default' directory. At next run, your bookmarks will all be ready for you.....without needing to mess about in the Bookmarks manager.

You can 'share' this trick between ANY of the clones, and it'll work every time. It's how I got my bookmarks set-up the first time I started using Edge 4 Linux, because M$ insist on calling everything 'Favourites' - a hang-over from Internet Exploder which they can't seem to let go of! - and their import procedure is unnecessarily complicated, compared to any other 'clone'. So it might be an idea to save a copy of this file somewhere, so's you can drop it in any 'clone's' profile as & when needed.

Mike.

[geo_c]

I wish the ungoogled chromium dev did an ungoogled version of iron, because iron has always been the cleanest fastest experience for me. Google is a deal killer for me though.

[keniv]

@mikewalsh
Thanks for the update to Iron Mike. Am posting from it now using FossaPup64 9.5. All seems to be working.

Regards,

Ken.

[mikeslr]

I wish the ungoogled chromium dev did an ungoogled version of iron, because iron has always been the cleanest fastest experience for me. Google is a deal killer for me though.

I haven't explored it recently, but two years ago I compared the default privacy and security settings of Ungoogle-Chromium with those of Iron and they were almost identical. About the same time as I wrote this, viewtopic.php?p=19203#p19203

At that time I used Chris Xiao's guide as a reference. It is still available here, https://web.archive.org/web/20221013104 ... ing-guide/. The guide, itself, discusses hardening firefox. But its concerns and techniques can be 'translated' to the Chromium world.

Examining settings and making adjustments was both time consuming and mentally challenging. I haven't had any reason to think that the German company which publishes Iron is less fastidious today than it was when I devoted the time and effort to examine their product. But you know what they say about assumptions.

On the other hand, a lot of Chris Xiao concerns can easily be addressed under Iron thru installation of extensions; something much easier to do under Iron than Ungoogle-Chromium. To the extent possible, I've installed Chromium's equivalent of the firefox addons Chris mentioned, or 8Geee suggested replying to my post.

The following show the extensions I currently use.

Iron-Addons.png.tar.gz

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Download and remove the false tar.gz of the above Iron-Addons. The png-screenshot's text was otherwise only barely readable. Rather than the recommendation to use duck-duck-go, I've installed Qwant. I've book-marked other search engines. Many of the Addons --such as CSS Exfil Protection-- are self-executing. No need to pin them to the tool-bar.

[xenial]

I wish the ungoogled chromium dev did an ungoogled version of iron, because iron has always been the cleanest fastest experience for me. Google is a deal killer for me though.

What's the difference between them technically.?
I never saw the appeal of iron browser myself as it doesn't offer anything over vanilla chromium.Ungoogled chromium seems a more concerted effort to strip some of the google mechanisms.

I see no significant difference between chromium and srware iron unless i'm missing something.

[geo_c]

I see no significant difference between chromium and srware iron unless i'm missing something.

I never did a bench test. It just feels like it opens instantaneously and runs snappier. Could be my imagination.

[mikeslr]

Thanks to MikeWalsh's continuing efforts to maintain portable-web-browsers, wizard's discovery that when Pulse-Audio is employed to render sound Iron had to be run as-spot, and mow9902's confirmation of wizard's instructions, see this thread, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 515#p83515 Iron again becomes a fully usable web-browser for Puppys.

As wizard suggested, you can download the Iron deb and rebuild it as an SFS. As I run (or test) many Puppys I prefer portables because (a) they keep cache out of RAM; (b) I can use the same profile across Puppies and (c) it's easy to create and use different profiles for different objectives. The following recipe and attachments will enable you to do the same.

What's lacking: MikeWalsh's easy menu-creator and remover. FWIW, I frequently haven't used them since I prefer running web-browsers with multiple profiles so would have to build 'menu-pets' anyway. If you search, you'll find recipe's for creating menu entries. Both MikeWalsh and I have posted how to create them.

In the absence of a menu-entry, you can start the portable by file-browsing to the attached 'iLAUNCH' script, and/or dragging it to the desktop.

Keep in mind that running-as-spot the files you download will be located in .../spot/Downloads. You may want to book-mark that folder to facilitate moving downloaded files elsewhere. Also remember that running-as-spot, files you want to upload will first have to be moved/copied to the /spot folder.

Recipe:

1. Create an appropriately named folder. Mine is named Iron-portable64-spot.
2. Download the iron64.deb, currently available from here, https://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=62774
3. Extract the 'deb'. In the extraction folder will be found a folder named /usr/share/iron. Move/Copy just the iron folder into the folder you created, e.g. Iron-portable64-spot.
4. Copy the following iLAUNCH.gz script into the same folder.

iLAUNCH.gz

Remove the 'false' .gz

(460 Bytes) Downloaded 58 times

5. Remove the false '.gz'

That's it. Left-clicking the iLAUNCH script should start Iron.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

I replied to this in the F96-CE thread, Mike:-

viewtopic.php?p=84750#p84750

The re-built Iron-portable now lets you choose what 'mode' to run it in at every launch.......either 'root', or 'spot'. The only snag is that if you're going to regularly swap back & forth between the two, downloaded items just go straight into the appropriate user directory...../root, or /spot. Of course, if you're going to stick with running it as 'spot', you can adjust the Downloads $PATH in the settings so it goes into /spot/Downloads instead.

It does permit you to have working audio, however, which I believe was the object of the excercise. You can't automate the Downloads location in the wrapper script, unfortunately, because there's no "--switch" in the admittedly extensive list that lets you do this. It's taken as a 'given' that stuff will go into whichever 'user' directory you're running as...

-----------------------------------------

The re-built package will be found at the usual location in post #1. Normal usage instructions apply, and the Updater still functions as intended; it's not affected by the afore-mentioned 'chowning' malarkey!

Hope this helps some of you! Posting from it now, running as user 'spot' under F96-CE_2......and watching Star Trek DS9 on NetFlix.

(Shut the browser down, run the Updater script in the portable directory, and you'l soon be on v110, the latest from the SRWare team). I'm going to perform a bit more re-jigging, and add a Menu entry for the updater, too.....just to make things a bit easier, like.

Mike.

[mikewalsh]

Okay.

A bit more re-jigging performed. The updater script now has its own Menu entry, too, so.....no need to dive into the file-system to run the updater mechanism. This brings it into line with Chrome-portable and Zoom-portable, the other two portables I was able to create updater mechanisms for.

Available from the usual links.

Enjoy!

Mike.

[mikeslr]

Mike, when someone accesses your last 64-bit builds on mega.nz, they'll see two offerings: (1) one dated 3/21/23 and packaged as a tar.xz; and (2) one dated 3/31/23 and packaged as a tar.gz. On March 20th, you reported modifying the LAUNCH script, viewtopic.php?p=84750#p84750 and I assume that's the build which your mega.nz folder shows as tar.xz dated 3/21/23. But (a) unless I screwed up my downloads, that change wasn't carried into the 3/31 build and (b) unless someone is familiar with the history of builds (s)he won't know the difference and will likely download newer the 3/31 build. [The post about the 3/21 change was not on this thread].

I'm going to re-download the 3/31 build and before reporting further.

Done. Made certain it was the 3/31 build. AS-IS, it doesn't run as spot and does not generate sound under pulse-audio. The attached alternate launch script --named spot-LAUNCH-- solves that. Basically it was flinched from your 3/21 build. The only change is that your 3/21 build had a folder named iron while in the 3/31 build it was named iron64. The script (rather than the folder) was adjusted.

spot-LAUNCH.gz

REMOVE false .gz ending

(462 Bytes) Downloaded 59 times

Remove the false '.gz' and drop into the portable folder.
Sorry, what worked under slimjet doesn't under Iron. Changing the desktop Exec= argument to read "run-as-spot iron" prevented the app from running at all. Consequently, your MenuAdd script can't be used. And figuring out how to provide alternatives (spot and root) in one LAUNCH script was 'above my paygrade'. If I had to, I'd create a menu entry which had as Exec argument "/FULL-PATH-TO/spot-LAUNCH".
Alternatively, the attached spot-LAUNCH script could be renamed LAUNCH, replacing the included version. But then Iron could not be run as Root.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

Ta for the "heads-up", Mike. I've removed the offending "extra" build; the sole remaining build is the current one.......which has had the user-choice treatment for running as either root OR spot, and is the one last posted about, here:-

viewtopic.php?p=84753#p84753

With 3 nearly full cloud accounts - a total of around 43-44 GB of packages as things stand! - you can hardly blame me for occasionally making the odd "house-keeping" boo-boo!

----------------------------------------

No need to modify any scripts, my friend. Hit 'LAUNCH' in this one, and choose your 'run-mode'.......'root' OR 'spot'. It'll fire-up in the chosen mode, a fact which can be corroborated by going to

Code: Select all

chrome://sandbox

.....and checking sandbox status. 'Spot' will say you're 'adequately' sandboxed (shows as mostly green).....'root' will say you're NOT (and shows as all-red).

T'other Mike.

[mikewalsh]

Morning, gang.

It's been so long since the last Iron release from SRWare that the listing for this thread was well down near the bottom of page 3! At long last, v129.0.6550.0 has arrived.....released just 3 days ago.

For those of you with an existing 'portable', just run the 'UpdateIron' script inside the portable's directory. If you've used the scripts to add a Menu entry for it, you should have an entry for the updater beside the browser launcher.

For anyone who wants this, but doesn't yet have it, I've uploaded the new build to the existing link in post #1.

As always:-

• Download

• Unzip

• Move the portable directory to any location you like.....preferably, outside the 'save'

• Click to enter

• Click on 'LAUNCH' to fire it up!

If you're like me, and leave tabs open from one session to the next, you may find that any open tab showing when it first starts may be showing blank. Just refresh the page, and it'll reappear again. This is something that's been in the Chromium code-base for the last few builds, and is supposed to keep resource usage down.

Have fun!

Mike.

[KevinTheGerbil]

Sheesh. Having real troubles with this Iron-Portable when running on BookwormPup64 10.0.8.

Firstly, when I run as spot I cannot download anything, nor can I change the download folder. This is similar behaviour to Ungoogled-Chromium-Portable that I was using previously, so I guess it's system-related (spot permissions etc) rather than a specific problem with Iron as such.

I've noted previous comments around spot permissions for folders and links and have tried changing permissions on (I think) everything that could affect this, according to the advice. NOTHING has worked so far - maybe I'm just missing something but I can't seem to see the wood for the trees. At least running as root seems to work fine (sound works OK too) so I guess that's the fallback option.

Secondly - and this problem DOES seem to be Iron-specific and is the real show-stopper for me - I've been trying to use it on both my laptops, with respective screen resolutions of 1366x768 and 1600x900. On each machine Iron fires up with what looks like a "Mickey Mouse" / "My first kiddie browser" screen resolution - full screen display looks more like around 800x600 resolution with the toolbar size, text size and menu spacings all being way too large for my liking. Nothing I can find in the browser settings (zoom, font size, etc) seems to provide any way of fixing this.

Before I give up and ditch this browser for good, anyone have any further suggestions?

- Kevin

[KevinTheGerbil]

The plot thickens. I went back to Ungoogled-Chromium-Portable (latest version, with a new / default profile) and discovered that when run as spot the GUI is perfectly OK and as I would expect re. toolbar & menu sizing etc. But if I force it to run as root using the same run-as-root switches as the Iron-Portable launch scripts (i.e. --no-sandbox, --test-type, etc), I get the aforementioned "Mickey Mouse" GUI, same as with Iron. The difference is that Iron seems to give me the same Mickey-Mouse GUI whether I run it as spot or root.

Seems like a no-win situation at present!

- Kevin

[mikewalsh]

@KevinTheGerbil :-

Let's see if we can address these for ya.

The first one - the downloads 'issue' - was taken care of a long while ago. Iron will download stuff, but it's going into /home/spot/Downloads.....and under normal circumstances, getting at your files involves physically moving them into a root-owned location, and then 'chown-ing' permissions on the downloaded item to make it usable by other applications, etc.

I ran up against the exact same issue as you.....and decided to do summat about it. So, a lot of discussion ensued - on the old forum - but the only thread you need to read is this one:-

viewtopic.php?t=6542

It moves stuff around in the selected direction AND changes permissions at the same time, so the downloaded item is immediately usable. It also has a mode which works in the other direction, moving items INTO 'spot' for upload. Give it a try, and see if it does what ya need.

DO right-click on the tray icon, and select 'Help'. It'll explain a little more about what's happening 'under the hood'.

TBH, I only gave Iron the choice of run-mode because more & more people seem to want to run their browsers as a 'restricted' user.....so, I created the option for them.

======================================

As for the "Micky-mouse" interface, um.....you've lost me, I'm afraid. Can you post a screeny to show us what you mean?

Mike.

[KevinTheGerbil]

Hi Mike, and thanks for the input!

Firstly your permissions changer pet package: It worked beautifully on my older laptop running Bionicpup64 8.0. However it didn't have any effect on my newer laptop running BwPup64 10.0.8! The same problem persists with both UG Chromium and Iron - i.e. downloading seems to be completely disabled, and also if I go into the settings screen and try to change the location of the downloads folder, that function is disabled too.

In a way this is reassuring as it suggests that it's not just down to something I'm missing or have done wrong in terms of setting spot permissions for download folders and links thereto. I have no idea why BwPup64 10.0.8 seems to behave differently to previous Puppies in this respect but it just doesn't seem to behave at all well when trying to run portables from outside the savefolder.

Re. the "look" of Iron vs. UG Chromium: I've attached screenshots, both taken at 1600x900 screen resolution. I was perhaps a bit harsh in describing the look of Iron as more like 800x600, but I think the difference is clear enough. The UG Chromium interface is what I'd expect to see at this resolution, the Iron interface very much not so. AFAICT this seems to be an inbuilt "feature" of Iron which doesn't seem to be user-changeable - unless I've missed something obvious in the settings, which is entirely possible...

Anyhoo... I've now given up on:
- Iron (because having played further with UnGoogled Chromium portable I've decided it does all I need it to as a secondary browser, my primary one being Firefox ESR);
- BwPup64 (which I was initially very enthused by, but being an old stick-in-the-mud I've now concluded that it just behaves too differently to earlier Puppies for my liking).

I'm now running Bionicpup64 and UG Chromium portable on both laptops (same setup, different kernels) and life is good - for now at least...

- Kevin

[mikewalsh]

@KevinTheGerbil :-

Uh.....heh. It's "confession time" here, I think.....

I'm afraid the "Mickey Mouse" appearance is MY fault. I've been short-sighted all my life; been wearing specs since the age of 3. Now in my early-to-mid 60s, I also have cataracts developing. Up until a couple of years ago, I could read the GUI elements of the Iron browser on a 1920x1080 screen.....but with the cataracts, it's now getting to be something of a struggle.

Therefore, I've been making use of one of the multitude of available command-line "switches" on the wrapper-script's exec line to make the tab bar, URL bar and bookmarks bar easier to read. I'm hanged if I'm straining already troublesome eyesight even further by squinting at tiny text when I CAN do something about it. "--force-device-scale-factor" does just that; allows enlarging the text of the GUI portion of the browser to make it easier to read. I normally have it set to 1.3, which enlarges said text and GUI elements - like the extension icons, etc - by 30%.....which is about right for me.

I thought I'd removed this before packaging & uploading, but it seems I forgot! (You won't find this in the settings, because it's actually in the launch script itself.....and even looking at that, unless you knew what you were specifically looking FOR you would easily miss it.)

=======================================

If you look inside the portable, open up the 'RUN' script. Skim down until you find the functions for :-

run_as_root

.....and

run_as_spot. Modify them to remove the

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--force-device-scale-factor=1.3

.....switch, such that they end up looking like this:-

Run-as-root:-

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function run_as_root {
	exec -a "$0" "$HERE/iron64/chrome" --no-sandbox --test-type --user-data-dir=$HERE/spot/PROFILE --disk-cache-size=5000000 --media-cache-size=5000000 --allow-outdated-plugins --disable-infobars "$@"
}

Run-as-spot:-

Code: Select all

function run_as_spot {
	run-as-spot "$HERE/iron64/chrome" --user-data-dir=$HERE/spot/PROFILE --disk-cache-size=5000000 --media-cache-size=5000000 --allow-outdated-plugins --disable-infobars "$@"
}

Make SURE there's a space between the end of the "--switches" and "$@"....and then restart the browser. That will return the GUI to standard appearance.

My bad. Sorry about that....!!

As for the downloads issue in Bookwormpup64, I've only just 'upgraded' to 10.0.8 from 10.0.6.....and I mostly use Opera (which runs like a dream everywhere). I haven't yet tried the Iron-portable here. Leave it with me, and I'll do a wee bit of investigation. I'll let ya know what I find out.

Mike.

[KevinTheGerbil]

A-Ha! Yes that fixes things nicely

Interestingly I'd already had a look at that RUN file for possible culprits but for some reason I didn't spot the scaling switches. Many thanks for identifying the solution - seems obvious now, D'OH!

Re. the vision thing, I feel your pain... Not yet at the stage where I need an enlarged GUI but I have an increasing number of floaters in my field of vision and it's only a matter of time I think. I've already noticed that I slightly prefer the 1366x768 screen resolution of my old "roadkill" laptop to the 1600x900 on this newer one that I'm posting from at the moment.

- Kevin

[redquine]

The same problem persists with both UG Chromium and Iron - i.e. downloading seems to be completely disabled, and also if I go into the settings screen and try to change the location of the downloads folder, that function is disabled too.

@KevinTheGerbil @mikewalsh I've just upgraded from BWPup 10.0.6 to 10.0.8 - so recently, in fact, that I hadn't even tried Iron yet. When I read this thread, I clicked on my usual shortcut and it opened without a hitch. Nothing was greyed out and I could download as normal.

I do recall having permission issues on previous Debian-based pups, though; the Chromium-based browsers only opened if I moved them to the save folder. In fact, I'd abandoned Iron while using them - until @fredx181 came out with his "LAUNCH-as-root" script. It's basically a tweaked version of Mike's script.

If you're still having download troubles, maybe it's worth a try? See viewtopic.php?p=135515 for details.

[mikewalsh]

@KevinTheGerbil :-

My findings are exactly the same as @redquine ; downlods work exactly the same as they did before I 'upgraded'.

Ever since Google changed the expectation - way back around 2016 - that everyone running Linux was doing so as JUST a 'user', necessitating the run-as-spot thing for most of the clones, downloading has had its share of "issues" for the clones. If you just download items as they are, downloads go through fine. It's when you want to save things as a specific name that the problems start. AFAIK, this all revolves around the xdg-open function and use of the 'file-chooser' mechanism.

With older Puppies, we used to get around this issue with the glibc-schemas .pet I put together some years ago. But it no longer works with more modern Pups. And to the best of my knowledge, xdg-open has NEVER correctly worked in ANY Puppy...

I may well be wrong in this assumption, however. I frequently am...

(*shrug...*)

Mike.

[KevinTheGerbil]

OK, so with these last two comments I'm feeling confused enough that I thought it worthwhile to re-state what I'm seeing - if only to clear things in my own head...!

I'm now talking specifically about Ungoogled-Chromium-Portable, which is configured in the launch script to only run as spot (although my previous experience has shown that Iron - and all similar blink-based browsers that I've tried - actually behave in the same way in BwPup64 10.0.8 when run as spot but the download issues disappear if run as root):

I wanted to know whether it was something somewhere in my personal settings (either in the BwPup64 system or the browser profile itself) that was causing problems. So as an experiment I did this:

- Booted up BwPup64 10.0.8 as a completely fresh system from a USB stick (no savefile).
- Installed and ran Mike's "SpotToRoot" package.
- Ran Ungoogled-Chromium-Portable (from top level on the HDD) as a completely fresh install - i.e. no prior profile folder, so a new profile auto-created on first run.

- I then went into the browser settings and tried to change the Downloads directory. No dice (No downloads possible, and no change to the download directory possible). This behaviour is exactly as stated in previous posts.
- I moved the whole Ungoogled-Chromium-Portable to the /home/spot directory and ran it as spot from there to see if that had any beneficial effect. Again, no dice - behaviour exactly the same.

- The above behaviour is exactly the same as when running BwPup64 10.0.8 with a savefolder (downloads don't work no matter where I run the browser from, either inside or outside the savefolder).

- I get none of these issues when running Ungoogled-Chromium-Portable (as spot) from top-level in Bionicpup64 - after running Mike's SpotToRoot, all the spot pernissions seem are correct and all seems to work fine when running as spot, with downloads working 100% and also the ability to change the Downloads folder works 100%.

It appears (if I've understood things correctly?) that you guys are not seeing the same issues I'm seeing when running Bwpup64 10.0.8 as an upgrade from 10.0.6 (presumably using a savefolder/savefile originally generated using 10.0.6?). On the other hand, I'm running 10.0.8 as a fresh install, not as an upgrade. I'm wondering if this might be relevant or not.

I know I could always use the workaround of tweaking Ungoogled-Chromium-Portable to run as root rather than spot. But that's missing the point - what I'm trying to get to the bottom of is WHY I'm having these problems trying to get portable browsers to run as spot in BwPup64 10.0.8, when other Puppy distros seem to have no such issues.

Cheers,
Kevin

[fredx181]

@KevinTheGerbil
I can confirm that with the newest BWpup that in UG Chromium settings the downloads directory cannot be changed, terminal message (about filechooser):

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[22345:22388:1120/130109.708412:ERROR:select_file_dialog_linux_portal.cc(766)] Portal returned error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: Portal operation not allowed: Unable to open /proc/22345/root

Anyway it seems that it has to do with the run-as-spot script in BWpup (that is different from earlier versions in pups).
Found that in /usr/sbin/run-as-spot changing line 120 from exec '"$SANDBOX"' '"$CMD"' to: dbus-launch '"$SANDBOX"' '"$CMD"' fixes it. (edited later)
Use at your own risk of course.
EDIT: edited later, I was confused as I tried several things, replacing exec with dbus-launch on line 120 does the trick for me.

edit: did proposal for the change here: viewtopic.php?p=136162#p136162

[KevinTheGerbil]

***EDIT / UPDATE / CORRECTION*** to my post below - this solution DOES work!!!

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't checked the spot permissions for the UG-Chromium-Portable folder itself. Sure enough, it was showing as root...
So I recursively "chown"ed the entire folder to spot, tried again, and...bingo! Everything works!

I confirmed this by changing the "dbus-launch" command in the run-as-spot file back to "exec" and sure enough, the download functions are disabled again.

Way to go @fredx181 for finding the solution to this

- Kevin

Thanks @fredx181 for the suggestion. I tried replacing "exec" with "dbus-launch" in line 120 as you suggested, unfortunately with my particular setup the download issues persist - so it seems it may not be quite as simple as changing this one line. Oh well, it was worth a try!

Just for "fun" I also tried simply replacing the /usr/sbin/run-as-spot file with the Bionicpup64 version of the file. UG Chromium launches fine but still the same download issues persist. Again, I tried running UG Chromium from various places inside and outside the savefolder including directly from the spot folder itself, as per my post above.

Anyway thanks everyone for the suggestions. It's quite possible that I'm doing something stupid and/or missing something obvious, but I've decided not to experiment with this any further as life is too short and Bionicpup64 8.0 works well enough for me for the time being.

- Kevin

[fredx181]

@KevinTheGerbil

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't checked the spot permissions for the UG-Chromium-Portable folder itself. Sure enough, it was showing as root...
So I recursively "chown"ed the entire folder to spot, tried again, and...bingo! Everything works!

My UG-Chromium-Portable folder itself is owned by root and everything works ok too (with the dbus-launch change), some sub-folders are owned by spot, e.g. PROFILE, which is done from running the LAUNCH script.

[redquine]

Thanks for the update, @KevinTheGerbil. Sorry to hear you're still having problems, but it's good to know you still have another Puppy that works the way you want it to.

I've occasionally had mysterious issues with upgrades as well, and ended up either sticking with the previous version or trying a different Puppy. Then I try it again a couple of releases down the line - and the issues seem to have vanished just as mysteriously! Maybe you could give BWP another spin in a few months and see how you get on?

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Maybe not literally, though; it makes it really hard to type stuff.