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Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /opt?

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ant
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Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /opt?

#1 Post by ant »

I barely have any free disk space in my oldstable (Jessie) Debian's box's 115 GB SSD/sda's /opt partition. :( I do have other partitions that have more room though like another HDD (sdb). I used the official package from Debian.org servers.

Thank you in advance. :)

ant
Posts: 355
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#2 Post by ant »

wizard10000 wrote:The answer you got on /r/debian was a pretty good one - for our studio audience it was to use a bind mount or a symlink to put /opt somewhere else :mrgreen:
Yeah, but it didn't work.

With my empty /opt intact after apt-get uninstalling google-chrome-stable, I did a "sudo ln -s /home/google/ google". And then I did an apt-get install google-chrome-stable, but it still installed into my /opt and took away my symbol link! :(

What did I do wrong?

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#3 Post by ant »

wizard10000 wrote:
ant wrote:...What did I do wrong?
Probably nothing. I'd move it now and then create the symlink :)
So what happens when I do another install and upgrade? I would lose them. What I did do was remove the old version /opt/google to another location, and then upgraded v60 to v61 successfully. I still would like to put Chrome's installation somewhere else! I lost 30% of disk space because of Chrome!

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GarryRicketson
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#4 Post by GarryRicketson »

Post by ant » What did I do wrong?
I don't use Google Chrome, that is the best way to avoid the consequences.
It has a tendency to do what it wants, not what the user wants.






---------------------
Why you should not use google-chrome

ant
Posts: 355
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#5 Post by ant »

GarryRicketson wrote:
Post by ant » What did I do wrong?
I don't use Google Chrome, that is the best way to avoid the consequences.
It has a tendency to do what it wants, not what the user wants.






---------------------
Why you should not use google-chrome
Yeah, that's dumb. I wished Google didn't have to use hard paths! Without Chrome (uninstalled), there is no /opt. Why the frak does it need to make an /opt for its Chrome? Sheesh!

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GarryRicketson
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#6 Post by GarryRicketson »

Probably you would / will need to ask the Chrome developers about that,
by ant »Why the frak does it need to make an /opt for its Chrome?
There are many reasons people do use Chrome, "Google Chrome", it is very popular.
Sorry, I don't know of a solution , besides not using it.

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#7 Post by ant »

GarryRicketson wrote:Probably you would / will need to ask the Chrome developers about that,
by ant »Why the frak does it need to make an /opt for its Chrome?
There are many reasons people do use Chrome, "Google Chrome", it is very popular.
Sorry, I don't know of a solution , besides not using it.
Yeah, it sucks. I don't like using Chrome as well. I am a SeaMonkey (same Gecko as Firefox's) user. At least Firefox and SeaMonkey don't need to use /opt. ;)

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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#8 Post by Bulkley »

Why not use Chromium? It's in the Debian repository so it shouldn't cause so much angst.

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#9 Post by ant »

Bulkley wrote:Why not use Chromium? It's in the Debian repository so it shouldn't cause so much angst.
Because not everyone uses it? I just need plain Chrome for testing purposes to pretend I am a regular Chrome user. :P

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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#10 Post by Danielsan »

Is Chromium worth to be considered as alternative to Chrome?

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#11 Post by ant »

Danielsan wrote:Is Chromium worth to be considered as alternative to Chrome?
Well, I want to be same as general users are using for Chrome. Like Firefox instead of SeaMonkey.

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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#12 Post by NFT5 »

If you just want to be like everyone else, why have a separate partition for /opt? For 99% of users this is unnecessary.

From a user's perspective there is little difference between Chrome and Chromium. Add Flash, change the icon and the name and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#13 Post by ant »

NFT5 wrote:If you just want to be like everyone else, why have a separate partition for /opt? For 99% of users this is unnecessary.

From a user's perspective there is little difference between Chrome and Chromium. Add Flash, change the icon and the name and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.
My Debian installation didn't come with an /opt because when I uninstalled its Chrome, its /opt went away. Google is adding it in its install with apt-get command. :(

As for Chromium, doesn't it also change some settings too? Are the user agents the same? SeaMonkey and Firefox don't use the same user agents and I run into issues with SeaMonkey that worked fine in Firefox.


luvr
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#15 Post by luvr »

If you have another partition available with more space, then why not mount it onto "/opt"?

Just create an empty "/opt" directory, and add an entry for it to your "/etc/fstab" file--something along the lines of:

Code: Select all

UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx   /opt   ext4   defaults   0   2
To obtain the UUID value, you can run the blkid command.
Alternatively, instead of the UUID, you can just specify the device name for the partition--e.g., something like "/dev/sdXY".

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#16 Post by ant »

luvr wrote:If you have another partition available with more space, then why not mount it onto "/opt"?

Just create an empty "/opt" directory, and add an entry for it to your "/etc/fstab" file--something along the lines of:

Code: Select all

UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx   /opt   ext4   defaults   0   2
To obtain the UUID value, you can run the blkid command.
Alternatively, instead of the UUID, you can just specify the device name for the partition--e.g., something like "/dev/sdXY".
I do have existing bigger EXT4 partitions that I would like to put Chrome's /opt into:

Code: Select all

$ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1         944120    699100    179844  80% /
udev               10240         0     10240   0% /dev
tmpfs             411588     22368    389220   6% /run
/dev/sda8       49851100   7007204  40288504  15% /usr
tmpfs            1028964        68   1028896   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs               5120        12      5108   1% /run/lock
tmpfs            1028964         0   1028964   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda6        4673664   2053404   2359808  47% /var
/dev/sda9       49882844  10741464  36584404  23% /home
/dev/sda5         944120      1284    877660   1% /tmp
tmpfs             205796         8    205788   1% /run/user/1000
Hence why I was trying to do a symbolic link into my /home/google. apt-get install/upgrade Chrome went to my tiny / partition. :(

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#17 Post by ant »

wizard10000 wrote:
ant wrote:...As for Chromium, doesn't it also change some settings too? Are the user agents the same? SeaMonkey and Firefox don't use the same user agents and I run into issues with SeaMonkey that worked fine in Firefox.
I use chromium daily and have Chrome installed, but my chromium cache and config directories are just symlinks to their Chrome counterparts. Been running that way for years with no issues. Cache, cookies, config and extensions are shared between the two applications.
What about Chrom*'s installation files? Where did you put yours (Chrome) from apt-get? Did it end up in your /opt?

ant
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#18 Post by ant »

Thanks to William Unruh's e-mail from alt.os.debian and alt.os.linux.debian newsgroups for the help:

> mkdir /home/google
> Anyway, now do
> mv /opt/google /home/
> ln -s /home/google /opt/google


OK, that is fine but the problem is that apt-get's uninstall removes my
/opt, its, symbolic link, and /home/google/chrome when uninstalling
Chrome. (Re)Installing it puts data files back into /opt again instead
of the /home/google I made!

I tried manually creating opt in / root directory with sudo command and
then "ln -s /home/google /opt/google". So, my manually recreated "google
-> /home/google" symbolic link exists in /opt. And then I did a "sudo
apt-get install google-chrome-stable" command. Now, it installed
correctly after seeing and testing its installation:

$ sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
google-chrome-stable
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/65.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 273 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Retrieving bug reports... Done
Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done
Selecting previously unselected package google-chrome-stable.
(Reading database ... 250093 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../google-chrome-stable_61.0.3163.79-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking google-chrome-stable (61.0.3163.79-1) ...
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.0.2-5) ...
Setting up google-chrome-stable (61.0.3163.79-1) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable to provide /usr/bin/x-www-browser (x-www-browser) in auto mode
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable to provide /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser (gnome-www-browser) in auto mode
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable to provide /usr/bin/google-chrome (google-chrome) in auto mode
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47) ...
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/locale: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/man: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/gnome/help: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/omf: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/doc/kde/HTML: 0 KiB

Total disk space freed by localepurge: 0 KiB

Scanning processes...
Scanning kernel images...
Running kernel seems to be up-to-date.
No services need to be restarted.


I hope the future apt-get upgrades for future Google versions
will work correctly. Now, I regained 30% of disk space. :)

Thank you, (W/B)ill and everyone else. :)

luvr
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Re: Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /

#19 Post by luvr »

ant wrote:Hence why I was trying to do a symbolic link into my /home/google. apt-get install/upgrade Chrome went to my tiny / partition. :(
Well, that’s precisely why I suggested setting up a mount point for your ‘/opt’ directory, since that would entirely eliminate this kind of issue (assuming that you have a big enough partition available—which seems to be true in your case). Everything under ‘/opt’ would, then, automagically get stored onto the mounted partition, and you wouldn't have to juggle with symbolic links. In fact, I'm thinking about setting up a mount point for the ‘/opt’ directory, too, because I would like to experiment with the current Firefox release as available directly from the Mozilla download site, and ‘/opt’ is the perfect location for such experimentation.

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