Chromium not starting on Ubuntu 20.04

This doesn't answer the question as such but may help someone... Tripped over this at work on my dell laptop after installing windows fonts and the workaround posited by Antoine regarding fonts solved the issue.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1864365/comments/33

However just tried the same fix on my Intel NUC and I get this

Gtk-Message: 10:31:24.401: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 10:31:24.402: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
[10624:10624:0100/000000.486036:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(374)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)

I tried this

$ sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk3-module

and a restart but still get the same error.

$ lshw -c video | grep driver

returns i915. So I'm guessing the driver might be the issue here as well as the fonts?

Confirmed that removing the windows fonts I installed solves the issue.

Anyway hope this helps someone.

M

Thanks to the fundamental observations from the Antoine Pintout answer, I recalled that I had installed several new fonts, not included in the Ubuntu base system.

A first effect was that the "Save page" window in Chromium was no more able to use any font, displaying instead a vertical empty rectangle ▯ for each letter. It is exactly the same issue as in the Antoine Pintout linked report.

However, Chromium was still working. Then, after some days, it presented the issue of my question.

Yesterday and today, Ubuntu deployed several updates that I applied: between them, snapd and xorg-* (but not xserver-xorg-video-intel). After the updates, Chromium still didn't start.

Instead of using the workaround suggested by Antoine Pintout, I simply removed the fonts I had installed, and the issue disappeared: Chromium was able again to start. I don't know if the recent updates contributed to this.

It is worth noting that I then reinstalled all the fonts that I had just removed, and Chromium was not affected by them, this time: it works. Again, I don't know if the updates brought some fixes.

By the way, the integration between Chromium, snap and Ubuntu still requires some improvements.

I just got this problem, seemingly out of the blue. Turns out I may be related to a problem I already reported about fonts not loading in the Chromium Snap.

I found the following workaround :

# first close all instances of chromium
sudo rm /var/cache/fontconfig/*
rm ~/.cache/fontconfig/*
sudo fc-cache -r -v
rm -rf ~/snap/chromium/common/.cache/fontconfig/
chromium-browser

This set of commands is a workaround for a problem I already reported here : [chromium] File chooser is not displaying font

Sometimes its helpful when troubleshooting a crash if you launch the application directly from a terminal so you can see the app's output messages, instead of from the Ubuntu dash or launcher bar ... so open up a terminal ( ctrl + alt + t ) and in terminal issue

chromium  --disable-extensions             

Does it run better now ? if yes then issue is probably due to a bad extension ... if it still crashes can you update your question with a copy and paste of messages shown in the terminal

UPDATE alright now from your new crash its GPU related, so launch from terminal using

chromium  --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer

and lets see if it comes up OK or not ... btw did you install graphics drivers yourself ? or are you using the default nouveau ?

UPDATE2 just googling about I see Chrome stop working after upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 so if you are willing to destroy your Ubuntu install meaning anything of value is safely backed up ( Dropbox, or MEGA nz, or on a memory stick, cloud ...) run the suggested removal of package xserver-xorg-video-intel ... I am on a Ubuntu 20.04 laptop using the default nouveau drivers even though I have an Nvidia card yet I do have that intel package installed as per

dpkg -l | grep xserver-xorg-video-intel

which comes back with

ii  xserver-xorg-video-intel                   2:2.99.917+git20200226-1            amd64        X.Org X server -- Intel i8xx, i9xx display driver

OK so I just issued

sudo apt purge xserver-xorg-video-intel

and after a reboot can confirm the machine is fine so that may resolve your issue (as per above link) ... depending on your risk appetite try that purge and let us know (as long as your backups are current )