How to port chrome/chromium to puppy?

[williwaw]

What are the steps necessary (and prudent), to make chrome and/or chromium usable in puppy?
The chromium I am looking at is a .deb from https://www.google.com/chrome/

[Clarity]

What are the steps ... to make chrome and/or chromium usable in puppy?

In-line PUP browser additions
Each PUP distro does these browser additions differently. Some have their own utility(s) for adding them while other PUPs do it via the PPM. The service to do so "may" be already in your PUP.

Out-of-line PUP browser additions
Here, separately, there are some utility installers scattered throughout Puppyland's forum. There are utilties for PUPs and EASY from @ETP (which I always use) and there are PUP portables which add to your distro as well as appimages, as well as ...

These "addition to add" pathways to your desired PUP is left to your (and our) discretion.

Choose.

[mikewalsh]

@Clarity :-

I believe you'll find williwaw is interested in building his own packages, rather than merely using those already built by others. This is a good thing, TBH; the more Puppians who learn the art of package-building, the stronger a position the community as a whole is in. It all bodes well for the future, n'est-ce pas?

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@williwaw :-

Mm. Well; the way I build Chrome wouldn't necessarily be the same route that others would take.

Many of the Chromium-based clones will happily run as the /root user in Puppy. Opera, Iron, Slimjet & Vivaldi all spring to mind. Chrome, though - and its "parent" Chromium, from whence Google directly draw the source code for each 'stable' major and minor 'point' release that they make - insist on being run as a "normal" user. This is why we run them as user 'spot'.....because otherwise they turn up their noses & complain, long & loud.

It IS possible to run Chrome as 'root', though this means switching off the security of the default 'sandboxing' behaviour. For this, all you need to do is to add the 'switches'

• --no-sandbox, &

• --test-type

.....to the exec line in the wrapper script. I don't recommend this though, since it usually buggers up access to things like GMail, or indeed any other Google service.

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

Whatever else you do, don't just install the .deb, as-is. You'll lose access to your printer, since it changes permissions/ownerships in the /initrd/pup_rw layer of the aufs system, and CUPS is one of the first to suffer from this.

Whether you re-build this into a .pet package, OR an SFS, I find it's best to place the 'chrome' directory within /home/spot, since this most closely resembles the /home/user configuration found within the mainstream distros that Chrome is specifically written for. Make sure to give this 'spot' ownership when constructing the package.

A launcher can be placed, as normal, within /usr/bin ​pointing to the location of the wrapper script itself; this is the item that actually fires Chrome up.

The wrapper-script is the bit that usually takes the most trial & error to get right. Ninety percent of the stuff that comes in the 'standard' Chrome wrapper is not actually necessary to get it running. At its most basic, something like the following should launch Chrome (rt-clk->New->Script):-

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
#
# Wrapper-script to launch Google Chrome browser - Mike Walsh © Jan 2020 (with thanks to Fredx181...)
#
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"
#
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HERE/:$HERE/lib${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH} 
#
run-as-spot "$HERE/chrome" --user-data-dir=/home/spot/.config/google-chrome --disable-infobars "$@"

The wrapper-script should replace the 'google-chrome' script found within the /opt/google/chrome directory of the unpacked Chrome .deb, and can be named the same. You will also need the referenced 'lib' directory if running Chrome in Bionicpup64 or older. For Fossapup64 or newer, the 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH' clause can be left out, as these recent Puppies have sufficiently new enough dependencies that the contents of the 'lib' directory are not needed.

(Download the Chrome-portable from my thread in the 'Internet & Browsers' section. Unzip it, and study the way the chrome directory is assembled. You'll find the 'lib' directory within, and this is where it wants to go, for simplicity of assembly AND of scripting. The reason there are two 'launch wrappers' (chrome-pup & chrome-pup_NL) is so that this package will run with as many Puppies as possible by means of choosing the appropriate launch wrapper. The 'wrapper' as quoted above is the 'chrome-pup' script.)

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

So; to summarize:-

• Download & unpack your .deb.

• See if /home/spot exists. You may need to create /home, as not all Puppies have it. If you do, sym-link /root/spot inside it, then run

  Code: Select all

  chown -R spot:spot /home/spot

  .....to ensure ownerships are correct.

• Place the 'chrome' directory within /home/spot.

• Add the 'lib' directory, if required.

• Use the wrapper script as above to replace the standard 'google-chrome' launcher. If using the 'lib' directory, leave as-is. If not, the 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH' clause can be omitted.

• Create a suitable launcher in /usr/bin (rt-clk->New->Script), something like the following:-

  Code: Select all

  #!/bin/sh
  #
  #Launch Google chrome...
  #
  chown -R spot:spot /home/spot
  #
  exec /home/spot/chrome/google-chrome "$@"

  .....and call it 'google-chrome'. The 'chown' line just reinforces spot permissions on the /home/spot directory, prior to launching. Never hurts.

• Finally, create a .desktop entry in /usr/share/applications (rt-clk->New->Blank file), called 'google-chrome.desktop'. Something like this:-

  Code: Select all

  [Desktop Entry]
  Encoding=UTF-8
  Name=Google Chrome
  Comment=Browse the web...
  Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome
  Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/chrome.png
  Type=Application
  Terminal=false
  Categories=X-Internet-browser

• Also, you'll need a suitable icon. D/l the attached PNG one, and stick it in /usr/share/pixmaps. (Don't worry about the size of it; ROX will auto-resize it to the required size where needed.)

• Now open a terminal and run

  Code: Select all

  fixmenus

  .....followed by a re-start of "X". This gets your new menu entry to show up.

And that.....should be that. Let us know how you get on, please.

Mike.

[williwaw]

the more Puppians who learn the art of package-building, the stronger a position the community as a whole is in. It all bodes well for the future, n'est-ce pas? :)
Mike. ;)

Hopefully, by reviewing the launch scripts, it can be done with out too much trouble to the point where any user can feel comfortable hacking a .deb for his own use.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Once I have a chance to do some downloading at something better than the 5kb/sec I have right now, I will give this a spin and comment further and most likely have a question or two

[mikewalsh]

Once I have a chance to do some downloading at something better than the 5kb/sec I have right now...

....ouch!!

Mike.

[Lassar]

How do I unpack a deb file.

Interested in chrome, NOT chrome portable

[mikewalsh]

@Lassar :-

How do I unpack a deb file.

Interested in chrome, NOT chrome portable

Couple of ways you could do it. For a GUI solution, use JakeSFR's UExtract. It auto-detects any one of hundreds of different file-formats, and automatically employs the correct tool to unpack it.

Or, for a command-line solution, you can open a terminal in the same directory as the downloaded .deb file, then enter

Code: Select all

ar vx ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

(This will work for any .deb file; just adjust the /path/to/your/file-name to suit.)

Mike.

[Lassar]

Got hold of JakeSFR's UExtract, but now it asked for a output directory.

Don't know how to answer this question?

What is this output directory for?

[rockedge]

Where to place the output of the extracted files contained in the .deb file. A .deb is a container holding compressed directories and files.

You could use Pkg on the command line to convert the deb into a PET. Might work for you

[mikeslr]

By default, if you just click OK UExtract will decompress a package in the same folder in which the package is located. That folder is named at the top of the GUI.
You can select a sub-folder of that folder by clicking the sub-folder in the Right-pane. Click a folder in the Left-pane (=Tree View) to file-browse to anywhere on your system or Click "Create Folder" at the Top-Right to create a new folder within the same folder as the package you are extracting. However, that isn't usually necessary as part of the extraction process UExtract creates a folder to hold the extracted contents.
After UExtract creates an extraction folder you can copy/move it anywhere.
After you no longer need them or their contents you can delete any folder.

[mikewalsh]

@Lassar :-

T'other Mike's right. If you simply click on 'OK', the extracted .deb contents are created immediately beside it in a 'containing' directory. You CAN specify a different location if you want to, though I personally never bother. I extract the item right there in the Downloads directory, followed by moving it where I want it to go myself.

I'm 'funny' like that; I've never liked assigning too much responsibility to any OS - not even Puppy - unless it's a process/script/whatever that I've written myself & repeatedly tested to make absolutely certain that it will always do exactly what I want it to.

Which of course seems pointless to some individuals. Why have a device capable of high degrees of automation if you're not going to make use of it...?

(*shrug*)

Mike.

[gilles]

Hello Mikewalsh,

Please excuse my bad english...
I tried to do what you explained to williwaw on september the 15th, here. I tried to do it with the 32 bits slimjet .deb downloaded there : https://www.slimjet.com/fr/dlpage.php because slimjet is built from chrome.

So, I extracted it and put the extracted file in home/spot as you say. To make the things more easy, I renamed the extracted file "slimjet"

Better than explain, you can see what I have done there :

/home/spot

copied'écran2.png (197.32 KiB) Viewed 2395 times

and there :

usr/bin

copied'écran1.png (147.72 KiB) Viewed 2395 times

and made the files executables.

Menu : no problem, I have it in the menu, with the icon I choosed.

I never know if I must write "slimjet" or "flashpeak- slimjet"...

But, finaly, slimjet do not run.

Do you have any idea where I am wrong ?

Thank you

[mikewalsh]

Hallo, gilles.

Umm.....o-kay. You say you extracted the slimjet .deb package, and then

<snip>...put the extracted file in home/spot as you say.</snip>

Exactly what did you put in /home/spot?

Slimjet is one of those that will run as root, so there's no need for the hassle of running it as user 'spot; it can in fact be put into /opt, but.....it's a bit of a pain. For a start, it insists on the wrapper-script being called "flashpeak-slimjet" - nothing else will work.

Secondly, the 32-bit version doesn't use the 'lib' directory I outlined for Chrome. Those are specifically 64-bit libs, and, well.....basically, 32-bit Slimjet uses a totally different set-up to what I described for Chrome. And if you look inside the 32-bit Slimjet directory, you'll see that Flashpeak themselves have already included a 'lib' directory containing the NSS network security stuff.....so if you put the 64-bit 'lib' directory in there, you've over-written the directory of required items with another directory of stuff that won't even work..!

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

I can't remember. Did you ever try the 32-bit portable Slimjet I built? It works fine for me, but I understand you're trying to get it running on that tiny little netbook of yours? What Puppy are you running there again?

Mike.

[gilles]

Hi Mikewalsh

Thank you for your answer, witch allows me to understand the things better. So, I was completly wrong !
Yes, your 32 bits slimjet works fine, and I enjoy, everyday, your excellent job. But I should like to learn more about linux, and so, to be able to build it myself. Already, you learned me many things. Thank you.
The tiny netbook (I installed a 2 Go RAM) I use only when I am travelling is not the matter. A "run as spot" browser is not the best solution with a so limited netbook. With this netbook, Firefox ESR works fine (even in Youtube). Regarding Slimjet, I use an acer 7715Z as well as an acer extensa 5620Z with a Bionic Beaver 32 bits frugal install, even if, when I am traveling, I can use it, from time to time, with the tiny netbook.
Thank you

[mikewalsh]

@gilles :-

Basically, for building browser packages based on the Chromium code-base, you can say this:-

• 64-bit variants all work along the same lines

• 32-bit variants all seem to be different.....and are built the way their developers think best

• ALL Chromium-based browsers have their individual "quirks". There is no one, standard 'build-recipe' that will work for every single browser. Much of this revolves around libffmpeg.so, which is used for audio/video codecs & playback.....and the Widevine DRM stuff. Every developer insists on implementing this in a slightly different way, so you need to be aware of that, too....

If you build them regularly, you get used to the differences.

Mike.

[gilles]

Hello Mike
Thank you for your answer.
It looks to be not so much easy... but fortunatly, Puppy Linux has specialists here.