IRON 32 bit browser is BACK!

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Slavvo.

I might be able to help you on this one. I'm about to start knocking together an SFS for 64-bit Iron myself, so.....we'll see what we shall see!

Am I right in thinking that the 64-bit version still wants Pepper in the adobe-flashplugin directory?


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Hi again, Slavvo.

Well I can answer that last question myself. Strangely, it still wants /usr/lib.....not /usr/lib64, as you might expect...

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RE:- Your 'sandboxing' issues. You'll probably find, like I have, that all recent Chrome (and indeed Chromium-based 'clones') on the 64-bit architecture now want to run with 'full' sandboxing.....even with the necessary Puppy 'tweaks'. I don't mind this in the slightest, 'cos it's got to be more secure like that..!

If you're using the .deb file, you'll need to change permissions on the 'chrome-wrapper' script itself. Instead of being

Code: Select all

r w x
r  -  x
r  -  x

.....which is what I normally use, it is in fact showing

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r w -
r  w  -
r  -  -

No execute permissions at all. I tumbled to that one when after initially failing to start from the Menu entry, I tried the wrapper-script direct from the terminal, and got 'Permission denied!'

I've moved the Iron directory to /opt (as per my usual practice), changed the .desktop entry to suit, and used a modified version of my 64-bit SlimJet wrapper-script. I've enclosed it below if you want to take a look.

On the Net flix front, I've replaced the libwidevinecdm.so module with that from the current Chrome; SRWare's supplied one was still giving network errors.....but it's so small, compared to Chrome's, there's got to be a ton of stuff missing, to my way of thinking. Put simply, it now works.


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Curiously, although libpepflashplayer.so and manifest.json are included in the correct location and path in the SFS, they just will not load, for some strange reason. So you have to place them manually in the /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin directory.....and then Iron 'finds' them.

Any thoughts?


Mike.

[OscarTalks]

Hi Mike,

That situation with the adobe-flashplugin directory had me puzzled for a while. I eventually figured out that because it exists as a symlink in the Puppy .iso this means that if you use a .pet package it will work but if you load Iron as a .sfs it won't. I think this is because .sfs packages are loaded underneath the main .iso in the layered filesystem. The libpepflashplayer.so in your package becomes hidden because the original symlink sits on top of it and obscures it.

Stick libpepflashplayer.so in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins in your package and also include a relative symlink from /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins in the package just to have everything structured correctly (even though it already exists in Puppy). I think these paths are all /usr/lib/* and NOT /usr/lib64 even in the 64bit Puppies.

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Oscar!

You've just saved me the trouble of PM-ing you; I was about to say I'd figured this one out myself, and was going to let you know...

Yep; that's the crux of the problem. /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins is an inode.....a 'concrete' location. In Puppy, adobe-flashplugin is a sym-link; and you can't install to a sym-link, can you? Or, if you can (with a .pet package), I'm hanged if I can see how...

I've made my SFS up to have libpepflashplayer.so installed to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, and left it at that. Because of the sym-link, it appears in adobe-flashplugin, Iron finds it, and everybody's happy. And, er, yes; you're right. Even in x86-64, it still uses lib, not lib64. Which confuses the issue, to say the least.....


Mike.

[slavvo67]

Hey Mike:

First, thanks. I'll try. That tar you attached is a dud, however. Errors unpacking. Either way, I get the idea.

Update: I was able to download the tar above by changing the name before saving the download. Had some %20's in there that didn't take well. Still not working. Mike, what am I doing wrong?

I moved Iron into Opt directory, as well. I moved your script in and also changed the chrome-wrapper to rw rw r Still, nada.


Slavvo67

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Slavvo.

Sorry about that; I forgot to append the .txt to it!

Give this one a try.....

BTW, that rw,rw,r is what the .deb file did with the 'chrome-wrapper'. You want it to be

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rwx
r-x
r-x

If you echo my experience, trying to start that from the terminal (/opt/iron/chrome-wrapper) will get you 'Permission denied...' And the only reason I use /opt is 'cause it's a nice 'catch-all' directory.....and since Chrome installs there by default, and these are all Chrome/Chromium 'clones'.....

(*shrug*)


Mike.

[slavvo67]

Ok. I think I have a bigger issue here with libdbus-1.so.3: no version information available...

Looks like a dependency issue that I'll need to fix up. Booooh!

[sheldonisaac]

Version 54.0.2850.0
https://yadi.sk/d/_S5b4g7tpcyZn

Thank you, OscarTalks!
I downloaded the iron-54.0.2850.0-i386.sfs
and put it in /mnt/sda1/slim/
Booted Slim Slacko 6 with pfix=ram
Did sfs_load

/usr/lib/iron/iron-wrapper starts IRON

Can someone please help on this: I can't move/resize the window; minimize and maximize work OK.

I am an ordinary user, not an expert.

Many thanks,
Sheldon

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, sheldon.

I've just run up the SFS packages for the 64-bit variant of version 55, which was released this morning.

The problem is the same there, too. As you say, you can minimize/maximize just fine.....but in the 'minimized' state, you can't resize the windows there, either. Interesting; I hadn't tried it with Iron before now.

I know you can do it with Chrome and SlimJet, 'cos I've done it with those a few times on odd occasions. It must be another of those things that have been 'hard-coded' in by SRWare.

Sorry I can't help with that one!


Mike.

[OscarTalks]

Hello Sheldon,

In Settings, tick the option to "use system title bar and borders". This puts the JWM window frame around it and then you can move and resize.


For anyone interested,

I have now packaged and uploaded the 32bit Iron version 55.0.2900.0 as .sfs and .pet
Pepper Flash is version 24.0.0.186
Ignore the browser if it reports 23.0.0.207
Use http://adobe.com/software/flash/about to verify true version.
Note that default setting is now "ask to activate flash".

Small point of interest, the official Iron download link for the 32bit .deb contained 64bit binaries so there is a mistake there. The tarball was OK so I used that for the repackage.
https://yadi.sk/d/_S5b4g7tpcyZn

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Oscar.

Yes; there seems to be more than a wee bit of that kinda thing about various parts of the SRWare operation. Even the forums seem rather amateurish compared to Puppy.

I, too, prefer the tarballs. With the .debs you seem to get all sorts of permission problems. I know it's simple enough to 'chown root:root', but it's just one more step I can do without!

I tend to always run without the system title bar and borders; maximizes 'real estate', as it were. But thanks for reminding me; I'd forgotten about that.


Mike.

[gjuhasz]

Small point of interest, the official Iron download link for the 32bit .deb contained 64bit binaries so there is a mistake there. The tarball was OK

You are right.

In Puli, I always downloaded the actual .deb file because the spot user runs it well.
I first bumped into problems in version 54 but I could manage it by issuing different commands to start the old versions and v54.

I picked up your v55 package as soon as I found your post, and now I am writing this using v55 in Puli. Spot user, of course. Thank you, Oscar.

Just one question: Did you compile v55 from source? Some of your binaries, e.g., chrome are smaller than their counterpart in the tarball.

(edited one day later)

Anyway, as I prefer sandboxed browsers, I created a pet file from the v55 tarball. Runs fine by spot user. Actually, I am comparing the performances of the v55 flavors (with and without sandboxing, different file sizes)

(edited a couple of days later)

Speed test result using http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/:

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Score      Browser

5553       Chrome v34 (sandboxed) - the fastest Chromium-based browser ever
5032       Chrome v44 (sandboxed)                  
4006       Chrome v48 (sandboxed) - the latest 32-bit browser from Google
4052       Iron v54 (sandboxed)
4040       Iron v55 (sandboxed)
4113       Iron v55 (the --no-sandbox flag applied, warning message appears

I skipped comparing other browsers, such as Firefox, Slimjet and Opera, due to their inability to play HTML5 videos encoded with the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec.

... With the .debs you seem to get all sorts of permission problems. I know it's simple enough to 'chown root:root', but it's just one more step I can do without!

Tarball files are owned by ftp user. Moreover, the SUID bit is unset for chrome-sandbox and chrome-wrapper. The appropriate changes are recommended by SRWare (manually if one uses the tarball), and done by the postinst script of the .deb package.

Do you all run Iron as root?


Have fun!

Regards,

gjuhasz

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, gjuhasz.

Yep, we do, I'm afraid..! Although I have found with the newest 64-bit versions of Chrome, SlimJet & Iron, that they will quite happily run, as root, fully-sandboxed.

I've been mulling over the possibility of running all of these as 'Spot', instead.....but I'll confess, I'm not too sure how to go about it. Obviously, we normally have to employ the tricks we do (like disabling various of the sandboxes), simply because the Chromium-based browsers don't like running as root. Well, the 32-bit ones don't.....they won't have it.

It kinda makes me wonder why it is that the 64-bit versions will, nowadays.....

Any pointers as to how I'd run these as 'Spot'? What script modifications would I need to employ?


Mike.

[OscarTalks]

Hello gjuhasz,

I didn't compile Iron from source. I noticed that most of the files including the big main executable are not stripped so I ran "strip --strip-unneeded" on them. This removes quite a large amount of stuff which is totally useless but adds a lot of size to an already big package. I really don't know why SRware have not included this step in their builds.

I usually find that files in a .deb are owned by root but in a tarball this is not always the case. Anyway it is always good to check and "chown -R root:root" if necessary is an easy step. There was a libavcodec.so in the .deb which was 32bit and not present in the tarball. Don't know if it does anything but I copied it across anyway.

Since Puppy generally runs as root by default and also because I wanted to support some slightly earlier Puppies I uploaded packages designed to run that way. Running as spot can be done and I know some sandboxing can be activated this way but it can be different depending on the kernel and Puppy version from what I have observed. You (or others) may wish to upload some packages with different configurations.

[OscarTalks]

Now testing Iron 58.0.3050.0 (32bit) with modification suggested by 666philb using bbe to enable run-as-root with sandbox and infobars enabled. Results will vary in different Puppies. Pepper Flash version is the latest, use http://adobe.com/software/flash/about to test.
Download from:-
https://yadi.sk/d/_S5b4g7tpcyZn?force_show=1

[spiritwild]

For the life of me, I've always downloaded their "update" and managed to keep things plugging along. Now I can't seem to remember what I did before. I always kept the wrapper script but now it's suddenly spitting the (run as a normal user) window.

Did something change in the latest upgrade? No matter what I try fails. I went as far as loading as spot but that doesn't seem to load any personal settings. I reinstalled iron from the 58 pet here. That works just fine.

Is there something edited in the pet that can be edited manually

Distro: LxPupXenial 16.08

[slavvo67]

I use the script below and make it executable in /root/my-applications/bin Then a do a drag and drop to the desktop. Well, actually, I package a pet like that includes the desktop but it's 64bit. Anyway, the script below works for me just be mindful of the path. I keep it in /opt/iron directory.... Hope this helps...

if su -l -c "PATH=$PATH LANG=$LANG DISPLAY=$DISPLAY /opt/iron/chrome-wrapper" spot ; then
echo ""
else
cd /
cd /opt/iron
chown root chrome-sandbox
chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox
chmod 4755 chrome-wrapper
cd /
su -l -c "PATH=$PATH LANG=$LANG DISPLAY=$DISPLAY /opt/iron/chrome-wrapper" spot
yad --text="Note: Script needed to fix Iron. Should be fine going forward..."
fi

[spiritwild]

Thanks! that worked like a charm.

[slavvo67]

My pleasure! Credit where credit's due, the first "if" in the script was received from RCRSN51. The "else" part of the script is what the SRWare provided to allow for proper permissions so the darn thing works.

Just another light note, you can do the following for incognito in the script above:

/opt/iron/chrome-wrapper -incognito