Some graphs don't display on chromium on latimes.com

[Shamak]

Update: The LA Times has removed the particular graph that was the problem. So if you go to the link below you won't see the problem. But you can do an equivalent test by going to https://get.webgl.org/

Hi everybody. I'm on Buster on Wayland with the Gnome desktop. There's a few graphs that don't display on latimes.com with chromium 83.0.4103.116 installed from the repositories. Here's the link.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/califo ... -outbreak/

Scroll down a little to get to the labels Cumulative Cases, New cases by day, Deaths by day, and Cumulative cases by county.

They do not display with my usual profile nor a new profile on my machine. Nor do they display on chromium from the repositories on the Debian live CD.

These do display on firefox esr. They also display with snap chromium installed on my machine. They also display with chrome installed on my machine. They do display on snap chromium on the Ubuntu live CD.

I've tried running Debian on Xorg but they still don't display.

In my settings images are allowed. Javascript is allowed. They don't display with hardware acceleration either on or off. I tried allowing insecure content on latimes.com but they still did not display.

This is the result of running inxi -G

Code: Select all

Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics driver: i915 
  v: kernel 
  Display: wayland server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: i915 
  resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0 128 bits) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6

I generally use firefox esr as my main browser but was recently considering switching to chromium so I don't know how it does on graphs in general. In the past if I've had a problem with firefox not displaying something I could usually view it in chromium. I looked at the Debian chromium bugs but didn't see anything that looked relevant.

I appreciate any help you could give.

[ruwolf]

They are SVGs.
Do you see another SVGs?
E.g. click to Original file link here Commons.WikiMedia.org/wiki/File:SVG_logo_h.svg

[cuckooflew]

Everything displays just fine using firefox, But I have not used chrome or chromium for years, for various reasons, and no way am I going to install it now to check, I am sure you say they don't display , then they don't display. There have been a lot of posts about Chrome, and Chromium, recently, various problems,..You say they do show with firefox

These do display on firefox esr.

There you go, it does not make sense to me that you would want to pursue Chromium, in my opinion it is not worth the trouble and waste of time.

I generally use firefox esr as my main browser but was recently considering switching to chromium so I don't know how it does on graphs in general. In the past if I've had a problem with firefox not displaying something I could usually view it in chromium.

Well, you could just use what works, now you have both installed, if one does not display something then try the other, if both don't display the same site or images, then probably it is poor website design, a very common thing now a days.

[Shamak]

They are SVGs.
Do you see another SVGs?
E.g. click to Original file link here Commons.WikiMedia.org/wiki/File:SVG_logo_h.svg

When I click "original file" on the page the big SVG logo fills up the screen. So yes, I can see it.

[Shamak]

Everything displays just fine using firefox, But I have not used chrome or chromium for years, for various reasons, and no way am I going to install it now to check, I am sure you say they don't display , then they don't display. There have been a lot of posts about Chrome, and Chromium, recently, various problems,..You say they do show with firefox

These do display on firefox esr.

There you go, it does not make sense to me that you would want to pursue Chromium, in my opinion it is not worth the trouble and waste of time.

I generally use firefox esr as my main browser but was recently considering switching to chromium so I don't know how it does on graphs in general. In the past if I've had a problem with firefox not displaying something I could usually view it in chromium.

Well, you could just use what works, now you have both installed, if one does not display something then try the other, if both don't display the same site or images, then probably it is poor website design, a very common thing now a days.

I have seen that current chromium thread where the update to chromium 83 was slow and crashed a lot. I observed that myself. But I did see a few posts saying much the same thing. That they had left chromium for firefox because of the trouble.

[stevepusser]

Hmmm...the graphs show up in the Sid version of Chromium I backported for MX Linux today, but I'm on xorg. AFAIK, the updated Buster version is nearly the same, except for disabled va-api, and I built against a backported icu 67 instead of Buster's 63. It should be available in my OBS repo in a few hours: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show ... m/chromium

[Shamak]

Hmmm...the graphs show up in the Sid version of Chromium I backported for MX Linux today, but I'm on xorg. AFAIK, the updated Buster version is nearly the same, except for disabled va-api, and I built against a backported icu 67 instead of Buster's 63. It should be available in my OBS repo in a few hours: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show ... m/chromium

Ok, I installed it from your repo. The graphs still do not display. I also tried it in xorg but they still don't display. I confirmed I'm using 83.0.4103.116-3~obs using dpkg -s chromium.

Just to reiterate the graphs do display in snap chromium.

[stevepusser]

They also work for me on the stock Buster Chromium, even with Ublock Origin running.

Do you have any extensions that may have an effect on the graph display?

[Shamak]

They also work for me on the stock Buster Chromium, even with Ublock Origin running.

Do you have any extensions that may have an effect on the graph display?

LastPass and Gnome Shell integration are the only extensions I have. I forgot to mention it but I've tried disabling them both (and have tried again). It doesn't help.

[Shamak]

This is odd. The website has pages for the individual counties of California with similar graphs. But these graphs show up in chromium (which I've set back to stock chromium). Here's the site for LA County. Maybe some weird fluke.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/califo ... es-county/

[MagicPoulp]

Do you see any error in the browser console? Or a failed HTTP requests in the netwok tab? THat is important to look at.

It is hard to understand if you installed Chrome from google's website, or if you installed chromium from debian. Now I read again, and I understand chromium.
I would stick to chromium if you can. It is more open source and linux friendly.

debian buster has 3 versions available. Try them with the --purge when uninstalling.
sudo apt-cache show chromium | grep Version
Version: 83.0.4103.116-3+b1
Version: 83.0.4103.116-1~deb10u3
Version: 80.0.3987.162-1~deb10u1

I would suggest uninstalling chrome/chormium and the extensions, and reinstalling the package.

Svg is a very established technology, and it is very strange that svg elements do not show up. Moreover, SVG elements are not hardware accelerated.

It is probable that your browser is using xwayland.

On debian, you can install different desktops. And at login you can choose between several ones.

It would be interesting to see if your chrome can display graphs on XFCE (sudo apt-get install xfce4).

If it shows up on XFCE and not in Gnome, then you have found a bug on Gnome.

Gnome is quite heavy and I am not using it. I use enlightenment also called e17 (buildable for wayland). THey claim that EFL is faster than GTK (the Gnome engine).

Maybe stevepusser has backports for e17 with wayland...

[Shamak]

Do you see any error in the browser console?

I get these errors. The errors do not appear on other pages on that site with similar graphs.

Code: Select all

evented.js:140 Error: Failed to initialize WebGL
    at r._setupPainter (map.js:2071)
    at new r (map.js:414)
    at caCityMap.js:71
zt.fire @ mapbox-gl.js:29
map.js:416 Uncaught Error: Failed to initialize WebGL.
    at new r (map.js:416)
    at caCityMap.js:71

Or a failed HTTP requests in the netwok tab? THat is important to look at.

No failed http requests.

debian buster has 3 versions available. Try them with the --purge when uninstalling.
sudo apt-cache show chromium | grep Version
Version: 83.0.4103.116-3+b1
Version: 83.0.4103.116-1~deb10u3
Version: 80.0.3987.162-1~deb10u1

I only get

Version: 83.0.4103.116-1~deb10u3
Version: 80.0.3987.162-1~deb10u1

To be sure I did this first.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

But those are the only versions of chromium that come up. In any case I followed your instructions but the graphs do not show up on either one.

I would suggest uninstalling chrome/chormium and the extensions, and reinstalling the package.

Done. Same result.

On debian, you can install different desktops. And at login you can choose between several ones.

It would be interesting to see if your chrome can display graphs on XFCE (sudo apt-get install xfce4).

If it shows up on XFCE and not in Gnome, then you have found a bug on Gnome.

I installed xfce. Same result.

Gnome is quite heavy and I am not using it. I use enlightenment also called e17 (buildable for wayland). THey claim that EFL is faster than GTK (the Gnome engine).

Maybe stevepusser has backports for e17 with wayland...

I'm happy to try if stevepusser has some.

[Shamak]

So in my previous post the error message indicated that webgl failed. Running chrome://gpu gives that webgl is disabled. And the Problems Detected says "GPU process was unable to boot: GPU access is disabled in chrome://settings."

So it sounds like (correct me if I'm wrong please) WebGL is a gpu process. Which requires Hardware acceleration. I have hardware acceleration disabled because Google Maps is unworkable with it on. I almost can't move the map around. Probably due to the age of my computer (2008 or so). I don't think it has a graphics card.

So to get the graphs to show I have to go to chrome://flags and enable the Override software rendering list. Then enable hardware acceleration. Then chrome://gpu shows that webgl is Hardware Accelerated. But as I say that makes Google Maps impossible and seems to make scrolling sluggish.

Interesting that firefox-esr on wayland seems to enable webgl. At least when I go to about:support it has a bunch of stuff listed under graphics under WebGL 1 and WebGL 2 (various WebGL 1 and WebGL 2 categories). And the graphs display. It's also worth pointing out that firefox-esr webgl fails on xorg according to about:support and the latimes.com graphs do not display either.

[stevepusser]

So the graphs work if you enable hardware acceleration? So...sort of fixed? Maybe someone makes an extension that lets you switch it on an off on the fly, if it doesn't need a restart.

[Shamak]

So the graphs work if you enable hardware acceleration? So...sort of fixed? Maybe someone makes an extension that lets you switch it on an off on the fly, if it doesn't need a restart.

And you have to go into chrome://flags and enable the Override software rendering list entry. It requires both.

"Overrides the built-in software rendering list and enables GPU-acceleration on unsupported system configurations. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android"

#ignore-gpu-blacklist

I'll check out the extension idea.

[MagicPoulp]

My listing of chromium versions had more results because I have more apt sources (but it takes lots of practice to use those without breaking debian).

Your firefox mentions gpu stuff because all processors usually have integrated graphics. If there is really none, it could be a software emulation of GPU that is built in inside firefox.

Web pages that use WebGL are scarce. If the ppage needs it, then you need to have GPU enabled. SVG is not hardware accelerated and is often a better choice on web pages.

[Shamak]

It turns out that there's a software solution. Something called Swiftshader that Google has open sourced. It's how snap chromium is showing those graphs. Here's the chromium blog talking about SwiftShader.

https://blog.chromium.org/2016/06/unive ... hader.html

In snap chromium when you look at chrome://gpu when you look under Driver Information and then GL_RENDERER it says Google SwiftShader. And under Graphics Feature Status it says

Code: Select all

WebGL: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable
WebGL2: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable

Whereas in Debian chromium it says Disabled (both with hardware acceleration disabled)


Here's a Debian maintainer talking about Swiftshader. He's advocating for including it with chromium-browser.

SwiftShader is a high-performance CPU-based implementation of the
OpenGL ES and Direct3D 9 graphics APIs. Its goal is to provide
hardware independence for advanced 3D graphics.

On GNU/Linux platforms, it will only provide an OpenGL ES
implementation and not Direct3D 9.

It is concretely useful for running OpenGL-based on systems with
decent CPU but without dedicated graphics hardware. For example,
running anbox with the --software-rendering argument.

Note that there is already a copy of SwiftShader in debian, in the
chromium-browser sources at third_party/swiftshader. (another copy
exists in qtwebengin-opensource-src, embedded itself in an embedded
copy of chromium.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=909156

I don't know if it's possible to use these swiftshader sources in Debian that he mentions.

Google has a way to compile swiftshader libraries at the following site.

https://swiftshader.googlesource.com/SwiftShader

I gave this a shot but one of the files (vk-unittests) seems to be missing. You git clone the folder SwiftShader.

Code: Select all

git clone https://swiftshader.googlesource.com/SwiftShader

Then follow the instructions

Code: Select all

cd build
cmake ..
make --jobs=8

./vk-unittests

"build" seems to have to be SwiftShader/build but there is no vk-unittests (once you run make --jobs=8). There's a vk-unittests.dir folder embeded deep in the folder system but that's it.

Then you have to tell chromium where to find the libraries.

On Linux, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable or -rpath linker option can be used to direct applications to search for shared libraries in the indicated directory first.

It's worth pointing out that if you download the .deb package for Chrome and extract its contents that the directory opt/google/chrome contains the directory swiftshader which itself contains the files libEGL.so and libGLESv2.so. I thought that maybe you could copy that directory swiftshader to /usr/lib/chromium like you do with WidevineCdm but it didn't work.

[Shamak]

Your firefox mentions gpu stuff because all processors usually have integrated graphics. If there is really none, it could be a software emulation of GPU that is built in inside firefox.

I think it's Mesa. In about:support under WebGL 1 Driver Version it says 3.1 Mesa 18.3.6. And under WebGL 2 Driver Version it says 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 18.3.6.

I also found this. But I have no idea if this is what's going on.

OpenSWR provides a high performance, highly scalable OpenGL-compatible software rasterizer that allows use of unmodified visualization software. This allows working with datasets when GPU hardware isn't available or is limiting. OpenSWR is completely CPU-based, and runs on anything from laptops to workstations to compute nodes in HPC systems.

OpenSWR internally builds on top of LLVM, and fully utilizes modern instruction sets like Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX, AVX2, and AVX512) to achieve high rendering performance. The charts below illustrate the compelling advantage of OpenSWR over Mesa llvmpipe in a real application scenario.

OpenSWR is now fully integrated into Mesa and provides a SWR renderer that supports much of the OpenGL 3.3 Core and OpenGL 3.0 Compatibility contexts. Standard Mesa environment variables provide the ability to run-time switch between OpenSWR and llvmpipe software renderers.

https://www.openswr.org/

[Shamak]

I may hack at this Swiftshader thing some more but this is pretty much at the edge of what I can do. But it's interesting. I appreciate everyone's input!

[Shamak]

So the graphs work if you enable hardware acceleration? So...sort of fixed? Maybe someone makes an extension that lets you switch it on an off on the fly, if it doesn't need a restart.

I haven't found anything. Extensions, shortcuts, nothing.