Chromium?

    Quote from chewitt


    Nope. It requires a large pile of libraries that we don't currently require and X windows, which is present in Raspian but not LE.

    I understand :( Thank you for the reply.

    In that case, are there any plans for a kiosk-type browser for SBC's running Libre? Something custom, as an add-on, just for Libre? Or, maybe an ICE implementation (like in Peppermint OS) for LibreELEC, where we could create an addon for a website, using some type of universal wrapper?

    • Official Post

    I've still got no clue what an SBC is, but either way the answer is no. For an in-Kodi browser someone needs to pony-up the hours to develop a proper in-Kodi browser, and that's a non-trivial ask. Currently the only (but sucky) option would be running another general purpose distro which has Xorg in the background via chroot or Docker - there's a thread in these forums somewhere on it.

    Quote from chewitt


    I've still got no clue what an SBC is, but either way the answer is no. For an in-Kodi browser someone needs to pony-up the hours to develop a proper in-Kodi browser, and that's a non-trivial ask. Currently the only (but sucky) option would be running another general purpose distro which has Xorg in the background via chroot or Docker - there's a thread in these forums somewhere on it.

    Single Board Computer - SBC, like the Raspberry Pi, Odroid etc.

    OK, thank you for the reply, I understand. I found the Docker method thread, but it's not really what I had in mind.

    Just found out about this addon. Not having worked with Chromium before, I'd like to ask a couple of things:

    1) Does chromium require a keyboard / mouse for proper operation?

    2) Can one return back to LE by pressing some combination?

    Not sure if this is the right thread for this but I just built a new box and whenever I close Chromium Kodi doesn't come back into focus?! The only way I can regain control is by highlighting something with the mouse... I've never run into this on any of my older builds, is this a Chromium issue? Estuary issue? LibreELEC issue? or some combination? I would greatly appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! :huh:

    Thx

    [edit] The issue is Estuary, which sucks because I like the skin...

    Edited once, last by loki131 (March 14, 2017 at 2:07 PM).

    Well I got tired of waiting for new browser and my script to be added into the system.

    So I decided to make my own based upon pure Chrome instead, so if anyone is interested, you can download it and install it from:

    browser.chrome.59.0.3071.115-1.zip

    Chrome version: 59.0.3071.115-1

    - includes Adobe Flash plugin 26.0.0.137 (and of course widevine).

    - hacked away pulseaudio compatibility because chrome does not accept ALSA when pulseaudio for bluetooth is running in background in LibreElec.

    I do not guarantee maintaining of the package, but at least it works stable and don't crash the entire browser entering some random flash content.

    Feel free to go through the code, it's mainly a fork from LibreElec but includes libraries needed for Chrome and Chrome itself incl. Adobe Flash plugin. So note that you'll be accepting all licenses and stuff by installing this package automatically. Also you install this on your own risk.

    How did you remove the pulseaudio binding? I've added Chrome to my LE fork as well, although I went a different route. LE actually has packaged most of the needed libraries, but they are compiled as static libraries instead of shared. I've changed that and also added the few that was missing in order to run it natively without any libraries from other platforms.

    I've "solved" the pulseaudio issue by stopping the service. This doesn't seem to work with things like http://youtube.com/tv though, which seems to depend on pulseaudio.

    Quote from escalade

    How did you remove the pulseaudio binding? I've added Chrome to my LE fork as well, although I went a different route. LE actually has packaged most of the needed libraries, but they are compiled as static libraries instead of shared. I've changed that and also added the few that was missing in order to run it natively without any libraries from other platforms.

    I've "solved" the pulseaudio issue by stopping the service. This doesn't seem to work with things like http://youtube.com/tv though, which seems to depend on pulseaudio.

    Hexedit away libpulse.0.so - just zero it out from the Chrome binary and save.

    I did try to kill pulse myself before running Chrome, but it did just respawn as it runs as system because of Bluetooth or something. So I went for the alternative route which isn't optimal and what you wish. But so far Chrome does not have a "disable pulseaudio" option, this is the way to do it. Even specifying alsa hardware doesn't help so far pulseaudio is available somehow (as it seems).

    Tested working, thanks :)

    Here's a quick way to do it with sed:

    sed -e 's/\x6C\x69\x62\x70\x75\x6C\x73\x65\x2E\x73\x6F\x2E\x30/x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00/g' -i chrome

    Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work for sites like http://youtube.com/tv. The only way I got that to work was using pulse.

    Quote from escalade

    Tested working, thanks :)

    Here's a quick way to do it with sed:

    sed -e 's/\x6C\x69\x62\x70\x75\x6C\x73\x65\x2E\x73\x6F\x2E\x30/x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00/g' -i chrome

    Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work for sites like http://youtube.com/tv. The only way I got that to work was using pulse.

    Didn't work here either, I did however get the navigation sounds at tube/tv. But the video just stopped. However I don't like /tv anyway so normal mode works just fine for me. Also primevideo.com works as expected, so I dunno what mystery lays behind youtube/tv.


    Pulseaudio is not an option here even because of audio profile switching which is working well and I prefer the bit perfect mode with alsa. And also I am not going to go away from LibreElec as I want things to be as simple as possible, recompile the stuff just to get shared libs is a nope for me.

    I tried also to use Chrome Launcher addon to see if that took care of sound with "youtube leanback", but it didn't.

    Can't be bothered messing up the other scripts anyway, I like things most automatic as possible. Now I just choose the source in Kodi, and the scripts tell which alsa source to use for Chrome. And I have no use for ut/tv, so I just gave a package that works for most. Then it's up to them if they need it or not. I don't want pulseaudio to be the main system in Kodi either as it does not serve a good purpose on that. For normal systems it has became quite good.

    But I don't understand why it shouldn't work with alsa, even if it's an app layer or something, everything I can see runs through the same chrome binary. Maybe some of the libs makes this happen, I dunno.

    You don't need it to be the main system actually. Very annoying indeed because it seems like it should work the same, but I guess there is some code in there that still expects pulseaudio. And it might be needed on some other sites, so just putting that info out there.

    Big kudos to olehenrikj !! Tried your Chrome with LE and it works like a charm on my x86 system. You solved a ton of issues for me and Thanks for sharing. I was using Chromium some time ago then an update to LE fouled it up but Chrome works just fine for my needs.

    RD :):)