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Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links?

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Lightsecond
Posts: 9
Joined: 2010-12-28 15:08
Location: India

Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links?

#1 Post by Lightsecond »

When I tried to open chromium from the terminal, I got the following error message

Code: Select all

[5486:5497:11823245935:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(154)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.org.chromium.zlQEPb failed: Too many levels of symbolic links
[5486:5497:11823246004:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(157)] Unable to access(W_OK|X_OK) /dev/shm: Too many levels of symbolic links
[5486:5497:11823246059:FATAL:shared_memory_posix.cc(159)] This is frequently caused by incorrect permissions on /dev/shm.  Try 'sudo chmod 1777 /dev/shm' to fix.
Aborted
So I tried running sudo chmod 1777 /dev/shm, at which I again got chmod: cannot access `/dev/shm': Too many levels of symbolic links
On my system tmpfs is mounted on /var/run/shm so I tried to cd to it, but I again got bash: cd: shm: Too many levels of symbolic links

I suppose the problem is not with Chromium, but I have no idea how to solve the too many symbolic links problem. I searched everywhere. I didn't find anything that worked.

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bw123
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Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#2 Post by bw123 »

wow that sounds nasty thanks for that info, this guy says he has a fix

# unlimit -n

but I wouldn't do it until I read up on it, not installed on my system

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu ... l?id=83044

possible trojan sdra64.exe

something about awsnap, don't run it as root.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/C ... 25d5&hl=en
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Lightsecond
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Location: India

Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#3 Post by Lightsecond »

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll try the ulimit method.
But I noticed something else today. Unmounting /var/run failed during the shutdown sequence. It was apparently never mounted properly. Maybe this is the problem?

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bw123
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Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#4 Post by bw123 »

the posts say it has thousands of small png files and it fills up the allowable address space for filenames, and then opens up awsnap.html it sounds like a pretty sad joke to me.
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vbrummond
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Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#5 Post by vbrummond »

This problem occurs if I enable the apparmor profile for Chromium. You have to enable it manually though and I do not think Debian even ships apparmor. Are you running Ubuntu? (i was actually the one that caught this bug, im not sure if it was fixed in 10.04 or etc)
Always on Debian Testing

Lightsecond
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Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#6 Post by Lightsecond »

I use Debian sid/experimental (for gnome-shell). And Chromium doesn't even start. I mean.. no Aww.. Snap window. Just tries to start and dies.

vbrummond
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Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#7 Post by vbrummond »

Same might go for SELinux. Do you have that installed? I had this error on Ubuntu because the MAC was denying Chromium permissions on /dev/shm.
Always on Debian Testing

Lightsecond
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Location: India

Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#8 Post by Lightsecond »

I have only libselinux1 installed (selinux-policy not installed), but it is a dependency for almost every important program.

Are you sure its a policy problem? Because on my system even the Superuser cannot access /var/run/shm. I get

Code: Select all

-bash: cd: shm: Too many levels of symbolic links
I'm taking an educated guess that them problem is with mounting /dev/shm

Update: I deleted /dev/shm and again created it. Chromium started as if it never had a problem. Interesting... I'll reboot and again check.

Lightsecond
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Location: India

Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#9 Post by Lightsecond »

The problem resurfaced after a reboot, so I repeated the procedure -> 1) Deleted /dev/shm 2) Recreated /dev/shm 3) Ran sudo chmod 1777 /dev/shm
Again Chromium worked. I need to find a permanent solution to this problem.

Lightsecond
Posts: 9
Joined: 2010-12-28 15:08
Location: India

Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#10 Post by Lightsecond »

Solved the problem. :idea: :D
/dev/shm was a symlink to /var/run, which was a symlink back to /dev/shm. Thus, infinite depth of symlinks. I solved the problem by deleting the symlink /var/run and creating a directory in its place. The /dev directory is populated at boot time, so making any changes to /dev/shm would be temporary. . .
This is probably not the most elegant solution (is it even *correct*?) But it seems to work for me. The fix is permanent.

Swansen
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Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#11 Post by Swansen »

this worked for me as well. Just to specify what he did, he went to the /run directory and deleted the shm file. Then created a directory with the same name as the deleted file "shm". After that you run the sudo chmod 1777 dev/shm command and you should be golden. :D nnooww, i know even less of what this does, or if there are any negatives, but, right now it just seems to leave a file related to chromium in the created directory and only one file regardless of how many times chromium is opened and closed. ssooo, it works. Maybe a future update will fix this issue, ether way, thank you for figuring this out.

Lightsecond
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Joined: 2010-12-28 15:08
Location: India

Re: Can't start Chromium. Too many levels of symbollic links

#12 Post by Lightsecond »

I didn't have a problem after that. I guess the problem was with wrong symlinks. I did a fresh install of Debian on my laptop recently. And I see that /var/run is a symlink to /run and /dev/shm is a symlink to /run/shm. /run and /run/shm are tmpfs (on RAM). I assume that this is the ideal structure. So recreating this structure on your system should be the proper solution to this problem.

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