Bug#884887: chromium: rejects access to microphone without prompt

[Rodrigo Aguilera]

This is really annoying. Please fix it.

Take into account that you also need to have chromium turned off before
editing the preferences file so it doesn't get overwritten.

Bug#884887: chromium: rejects access to microphone without prompt

[Moritz Mühlenhoff]

On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 07:25:42AM +0100, Jochen Sprickerhof wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> just to state it here, this bug was introduced in
> 
> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-chromium/pkg-chromium.git/commit/debian/master_preferences?id=625a96d9c368400f1e0b19cdb74fbcc1d4860948
> 
> +  "hardware": {
> +"audio_capture_enabled": false
> +  },
> 
> And is Debian only. Can you please explain why it should be correct?

I ran into the same issue and it's quite a usability nightmare: Anyone trying
to use the microphone (e.g. for a video conference) gets an notification that
the microphone is non-available and when going to the preferences setting
one can grant access but that change is silently dropped, the microphone still
doesn't work and when entering the dialogue again it's blocked again.

I also don't see why this was done? Chromium already allows to configure
the access to the microphone for websites within it's dialogues, so why
is that needed?

Cheers,
Moritz

Bug#884887: chromium: rejects access to microphone without prompt

[Jochen Sprickerhof]

Hi,

just to state it here, this bug was introduced in

https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-chromium/pkg-chromium.git/commit/debian/master_preferences?id=625a96d9c368400f1e0b19cdb74fbcc1d4860948

+  "hardware": {
+"audio_capture_enabled": false
+  },

And is Debian only. Can you please explain why it should be correct?

Thanks!

Jochen


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Bug#884887: chromium: rejects access to microphone without prompt

[Jochen Sprickerhof]

Package: chromium
Version: 63.0.3239.84-1
Followup-For: Bug #884887

Hi,

this bugged me as well and I found the problem in the:

/usr/share/chromium/master_preferences

where audio_capture_enabled is set to false.

Setting it to true fixed it for me:

sudo sed 's/audio_capture_enabled": false/audio_capture_enabled": true/' 
/usr/share/chromium/master_preferences

@Michael: Can you give a reason for the default? Changelog is only
stating "Stricter default master preferences." Also, can you push the
latest changes to anonscm.debian.org? Thanks!

Cheers Jochen

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages chromium depends on:
ii  chromium-common  63.0.3239.84-1
ii  libasound2   1.1.3-5
ii  libatk1.0-0  2.26.1-2
ii  libavcodec57 7:3.4.1-1+b1
ii  libavformat577:3.4.1-1+b1
ii  libavutil55  7:3.4.1-1+b1
ii  libc62.26-0experimental2
ii  libcairo21.15.8-3
ii  libcups2 2.2.6-3
ii  libdbus-1-3  1.12.2-1
ii  libevent-2.1-6   2.1.8-stable-4
ii  libexpat12.2.5-3
ii  libflac8 1.3.2-1
ii  libfontconfig1   2.12.6-0.1
ii  libfreetype6 2.8.1-0.1
ii  libgcc1  1:7.2.0-18
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0   2.36.11-1
ii  libglib2.0-0 2.54.2-4
ii  libgtk-3-0   3.22.26-2
ii  libharfbuzz0b1.7.2-1
ii  libicu57 57.1-8
ii  libjpeg62-turbo  1:1.5.2-2+b1
ii  liblcms2-2   2.9-1
ii  libminizip1  1.1-8+b1
ii  libnspr4 2:4.16-1+b1
ii  libnss3  2:3.34-1
ii  libopus0 1.2.1-1
ii  libpango-1.0-0   1.40.14-1
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0  1.40.14-1
ii  libpng16-16  1.6.34-1
ii  libpulse011.1-4
ii  libre2-3 20170101+dfsg-1
ii  libsnappy1v5 1.1.7-1
ii  libstdc++6   7.2.0-18
ii  libvpx4  1.6.1-3
ii  libwebp6 0.6.0-4
ii  libwebpdemux20.6.0-4
ii  libwebpmux3  0.6.0-4
ii  libx11-6 2:1.6.4-3
ii  libx11-xcb1  2:1.6.4-3
ii  libxcb1  1.12-1
ii  libxcomposite1   1:0.4.4-2
ii  libxcursor1  1:1.1.15-1
ii  libxdamage1  1:1.1.4-3
ii  libxext6 2:1.3.3-1+b2
ii  libxfixes3   1:5.0.3-1
ii  libxi6   2:1.7.9-1
ii  libxml2  2.9.4+dfsg1-5.2
ii  libxrandr2   2:1.5.1-1
ii  libxrender1  1:0.9.10-1
ii  libxslt1.1   1.1.29-5
ii  libxss1  1:1.2.2-1+b2
ii  libxtst6 2:1.2.3-1
ii  zlib1g   1:1.2.8.dfsg-5

Versions of packages chromium recommends:
ii  fonts-liberation  1:1.07.4-5

Versions of packages chromium suggests:
pn  chromium-driver
pn  chromium-l10n  
pn  chromium-shell 
pn  chromium-widevine  

-- no debconf information

Bug#884887: chromium: rejects access to microphone without prompt

[Jeremy Lainé]

Package: chromium
Version: 63.0.3239.84-1
Severity: normal

When trying to make use of any website which uses getUserMedia(),
including the reference WebRTC app, the request fails with a
NotAllowedError without prompting me at all. The expected behaviour is
for the usual prompt to appear, asking for access to the microphone.

I have checked that the "Block" and "Allow" lists in content settings
are both empty and the default action is "Ask before accessing".
Furthermore, manually adding websites to the "Allow" list makes no
difference, I still get the crossed out microphone icon to the right of
the URL bar indicating access to the microphone was denied.

This really seems to be a UX issue and not a problem accessing the
underlying hardware, as everything works fine if I start Chromium with
the –use-fake-ui-for-media-stream flag.

I have also tried the Google-provided .deb for Chrome (also M63) on the
same machine everything works out of the box, so it really looks like
this issue is specific to the Debian/Chromium build.

Let me know if there are any further tests I can perform to narrow down
the root cause of the issue.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=en_US:en (charmap=UTF-8)

Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages chromium depends on:
ii  chromium-common  63.0.3239.84-1
ii  libasound2   1.1.3-5
ii  libatk1.0-0  2.26.1-1
ii  libavcodec57 7:3.4.1-1
ii  libavformat57    7:3.4.1-1
ii  libavutil55  7:3.4.1-1
ii  libc6    2.25-5
ii  libcairo2    1.15.8-2
ii  libcups2 2.2.6-3
ii  libdbus-1-3  1.12.2-1
ii  libevent-2.1-6   2.1.8-stable-4
ii  libexpat1    2.2.5-3
ii  libflac8 1.3.2-1
ii  libfontconfig1   2.12.6-0.1
ii  libfreetype6 2.8.1-0.1
ii  libgcc1  1:7.2.0-18
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0   2.36.11-1
ii  libglib2.0-0 2.54.2-3
ii  libgtk-3-0   3.22.26-2
ii  libharfbuzz0b    1.7.2-1
ii  libicu57 57.1-8
ii  libjpeg62-turbo  1:1.5.2-2+b1
ii  liblcms2-2   2.9-1
ii  libminizip1  1.1-8+b1
ii  libnspr4 2:4.16-1+b1
ii  libnss3  2:3.34-1
ii  libopus0 1.2.1-1
ii  libpango-1.0-0   1.40.13-2
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0  1.40.13-2
ii  libpng16-16  1.6.34-1
ii  libpulse0    11.1-4
ii  libre2-3 20170101+dfsg-1
ii  libsnappy1v5 1.1.7-1
ii  libstdc++6   7.2.0-18
ii  libvpx4  1.6.1-3
ii  libwebp6 0.6.0-4
ii  libwebpdemux2    0.6.0-4
ii  libwebpmux3  0.6.0-4
ii  libx11-6 2:1.6.4-3
ii  libx11-xcb1  2:1.6.4-3
ii  libxcb1  1.12-1
ii  libxcomposite1   1:0.4.4-2
ii  libxcursor1  1:1.1.15-1
ii  libxdamage1  1:1.1.4-3
ii  libxext6 2:1.3.3-1+b2
ii  libxfixes3   1:5.0.3-1
ii  libxi6   2:1.7.9-1
ii  libxml2  2.9.4+dfsg1-5.2
ii  libxrandr2   2:1.5.1-1
ii  libxrender1  1:0.9.10-1
ii  libxslt1.1   1.1.29-5
ii  libxss1  1:1.2.2-1+b2
ii  libxtst6 2:1.2.3-1
ii  zlib1g   1:1.2.8.dfsg-5

Versions of packages chromium recommends:
ii  fonts-liberation  1:1.07.4-5

Versions of packages chromium suggests:
pn  chromium-driver    
pn  chromium-l10n  
pn  chromium-shell 
pn  chromium-widevine  

-- no debconf information