*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 1616650 ***
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1616650
Alexis, the problem you're describing is definitely the automatic update
mechanism that results in gnome-shell loosing track of the running
instance of chromium.
I strongly suggest you run:
snap set core experimental.refresh-app-awareness=true
and restart chromium. This should fix the problem.
** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 1616650
snap refresh while command is running may cause issues
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1855489
Title:
Chromium auto-restart feature breaks many features
Status in chromium-browser package in Ubuntu:
Incomplete
Bug description:
Once in a while, Chromium "auto-restarts" to take advantage of new
features and especially apply security patches. This sounds like a
great feature only it currently has very bad repercussions (as in,
it's terribly bogus).
Steps to reproduce:
1. start Chromium
2. browse to various pages
3. let the app. sit there until it auto-restarts
4. from this point on, the app. is bogus, it's not able to save many
different things
5. restarting the app. will not see all changes you make between step 3 and 5
(see below)
Note that the duration of the session is probably not an issue in
itself. I think only the auto-restart feature is what causes all the
other issues.
The features I've noticed that broke completely after such a restart:
(1) Gnome Icon
The small arrow in the Chromium Icon from my Gnome toolbar (the bar
which by default is on the left side of the screen) disappears. That
in itself is not the end of the world except that this means I can't
click the icon to go back to my window. Clicking the icon opens a new
instance.
To fix this problem, you would have to run an additional binary. The
first binary has to remain in place to hold the icon as expected.
Without doing that, you lose the connection to Gnome. There may be
other methods to do that. It may also be because you close the old
connection to X-Windows and Gnome views that as "now you're gone".
Either way, this is not too important to me and it's not a big bad bug
in itself.
(2) Trying to Install Extensions generates: "Could not create download
directory"
As such, this error doesn't sound too bad. You should be able to tweak
your directory and make sure that it's writable. The fact is that my
download directory was just fine. However, it looks like Chrome
doesn't think it is.
My take is that Chrome has a form of lock and the old lock is still in
place making it impossible for new version to access the folders that
are locked.
This is rather bad since many functionalities may be affected by this.
I've only noticed the problem with downloading extensions, but it is
not unlikely that other features are also affected in a similar
manner.
(3) Changing Settings
As I was in that situation, I thought I would change my "On Startup"
settings so that I could get my windows back on a restart. That way
the restart is mostly transparent. Oh but...
The changes to the settings did not take; while still using Chromium
it looked like it was properly changed, but it was not auto-saved as
it ought to be. I am thinking that a similar lock (as mentioned in the
previous section) is still in place and it prevents the settings from
being saved.
(4) Non-Existent History
After my restart, the windows did not come back. That is, I only got
two windows from a while back... Not the newest windows as I would
expect. (i.e. all the windows at the time I last closed the browser).
So I decided to check out the history. Nothing. I could only see
history from many days ago. Again, my take is that when we had that
background auto-restart of Chromium, it was not able to access the
history file. It kept the history in memory and never told anyone it
couldn't save it anywhere. (Maybe the logs are also affected... I've
not checked. But that could explain why developers did not notice and
I would imagine that developers open/close the app. all the time).
I think this is the worst one. I like to have my history so I can go
back to pages where I have been in the past. I don't always use it,
but in this very situation I was interested by one specific page and
the link is gone.
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Note 1: I'm on Ubuntu 18.04 using the Chromium snap version
78.0.3904.108 (64 bit).
Note 2: I insist that changing the Download folder had no effects.
That's not the issue in this case. Also, I could download files and
they would go in my ~/Downloads folder as expected. No problem on that
one.
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