Google chrome strange effect

Ask Fedora
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1

I don’t normally use google chrome. Only when I need to be connected to gmail. I used it 2 times in the last 18 months. However I used it briefly on march 27 and april 3.

What happens is the temperature of /dev/sdb to rise from 23C to 37 C for the time chrome is being used. It’s not used for heavy browsing, only creating an account somewhere.

Is chrome possibly doing nasty stuff behind my back? I wouldn’t be surprised. Oh, and /dev/sdb is not being used at all while I’m on Fedora. In fact it contains a Windows 7 setup encrypted in a Truecrypt 7.0a container.

Anyone else ?

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3

Use some kind of IMAP email client, like Evolution Mail and Calendar instead of Chrome to access your Gmail.

1 Like
4

I don’t need to access gmail, I need to connect with google for ID purpose or to create a new google account. E.g. Raindrop.io or https://accounts.x.ai/sign-in

Sorry if I wasn’t clear.

1 Like
5

Oh so you need the google spyware as a service :grinning_face:

6

Without joking, you could do all that in firefox. Firefox has profiles, they are just not exposed for whatever reason

about:profiles

Or use this command

# open profile manager
firefox -p

# open a specific profile
firefox -p GOOGLE

That should be it though (@theprogram), the chrome problem is supposed to be solved. There is a tool called iotop that could help

sudo iotop -o -P | grep chrome

Alternatively, you could use strace

sudo strace -f -e trace=read,write -p $(pgrep -o chrome)

There is also a tool using bpf (a cool kernel feature coming from the BSDs or something)

sudo bpftrace -e 't:block:block_rq_issue /comm=="chrome"/ { printf("io\n"); }'

# possibly nicer output
sudo bpftrace -e 'tracepoint:block:block_rq_issue /comm == "chrome"/ { printf("%s %d bytes\n", comm, args->nr_sector * 512); }'

(Those commands come from an LLM, tell me if there are issues)

7

Oh that’s interesting. I’m using chrome flatpak 120 (2023). No success with the following commands though:

10022  strace -f -e trace=open,stat,fstat flatpak run com.google.Chrome
10026  strace -f -e trace=ioctl,fstat flatpak run com.google.Chrome 
10027  sudo iotop -o -P | grep chrome
10029  strace -f -e trace=read,write flatpak run com.google.Chrome 
10033  sudo iotop -o -P | grep flatpak
10034  sudo bpftrace -e 't:block:block_rq_issue /comm=="chrome"/ { printf("io\n"); }'
10037  sudo bpftrace -e 't:block:block_rq_issue /comm=="flatpak"/ { printf("io\n"); }'

There are always issues fetching commands from an LLM. E.g. iotop output is not piping to grep; better redirect output of strace to file e.g. strace -f -e trace=read,write flatpak run com.google.Chrome > chrome_syscalls 2>&1 and finally bpftrace remained silent (no output). That put me on track though. Thanks!

BTW sda3 is not even mounted.

~$ flatpak info --show-permissions com.google.Chrome
[Context]
shared=network;ipc;
sockets=x11;wayland;pulseaudio;pcsc;cups;
devices=all;
filesystems=host-etc;~/.config/kioslaverc;xdg-music;xdg-pictures;xdg-videos;/run/.heim_org.h5l.kcm-socket;~/.config/dconf:ro;xdg-download;xdg-run/dconf;xdg-documents;xdg-run/pipewire-0;

[Session Bus Policy]
org.freedesktop.Notifications=talk
org.freedesktop.FileManager1=talk
org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.chromium.*=own
org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher=talk
org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver=talk
org.freedesktop.secrets=talk
ca.desrt.dconf=talk
org.gnome.SessionManager=talk

[System Bus Policy]
org.freedesktop.Avahi=talk
org.freedesktop.UPower=talk
org.bluez=talk

[Environment]
GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf
GIO_EXTRA_MODULES=/app/lib/gio/modules
GTK_PATH=/app/lib/gtkmodules
DCONF_USER_CONFIG_DIR=.config/dconf

~$ flatpak info  com.google.Chrome

Google Chrome - The web browser from Google

          ID: com.google.Chrome
         Ref: app/com.google.Chrome/x86_64/stable
        Arch: x86_64
      Branch: stable
     Version: 120.0.6099.71-1
     License: LicenseRef-proprietary
      Origin: flathub
  Collection: org.flathub.Stable
Installation: system
   Installed: 19,9 Mo
     Runtime: org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/22.08
         Sdk: org.freedesktop.Sdk/x86_64/22.08

      Commit: e753bcff984519f35c329d6cbe113878426816b16449bd4024b756802ec359f3
      Parent: 187764f56f383de814fc4f43dfff9b43326c8e705ca379ae0a03b6fa75b3986c
     Subject: Update chrome.deb to 120.0.6099.71-1 (17c09490)
        Date: 2023-12-08 15:57:42 +0000
~$
1 Like
8

I value your posts enormously, so if you post from a LLM, I treat them as if they were your own.

10

Oh, yes when using the flatpak I dont know if these commands work. You might need to find the bubblewrap instance and look for that?

Chrome in Flatapak uses Zypak for the sandbox, a substantial difference from the default. Might be relevant.

If the disk is not even mounted, how can any userspace program interact with it??

Btw, these Chrome permissions are kinda crazy, like read-write permission on entire /etc. That could be read-only I think, but maybe the flatpakking is incomplete.

What if the issue is not Chrome? Is there something else you do in this scenario?

11

Yeah but I didnt test them so could be garbage XD like it seems to have been, but the idea is there