[sf-lug] Chromium and Google Chrome (was: Mail problems (or Firefox, or systemd)

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> Quoting Ken Shaffer (kenshaffer80 at gmail.com):


> > Chrome browser, not Chromium.
> 
> If you want a nice _open source_ browser, add Chromium to your
> collection.  Google Chrome is proprietary software.  (I imagine
> Netflix likes it for its DRM handcuffing of your esteemed self.)

That having been said, there's a bit of notable bad behaviour that
Chromium and Google Chrome have in common:



From: golinux at dyne.org
Date: 2018-12-19 14:30 -0800
To: dng @lists.dyne.org
Subject: [DNG] Multiple chromium mystery processes

I just noticed that chromium has started spawning multiple PIDs that 
start with this string: 

PID XXXX chromium --type=renderer --field-trial-handle=1 
--primordial-pipe-token= and on and on including lots of number 
sequences. 

The complete string goes on for several page widths of my rather large 
monitor. For every PID XXXX I kill, another one (or two) pops up. I 
currently have about 15 with this prefix running and they all seem to be 
sleeping. But I have had them peg out a core to 100%. 

I searched a bit, and gather that this is phoning home with who knows 
what information about my habits. That can't be a good thing. Does 
anyone know how to kill it? Is there something comparable to 
about:config in chromium? 

Version 57.0.2987.98 Built on 8.7 



I replied:



Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2018 15:25:53 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: dng at lists.dyne.org
Subject: Re: [DNG] Multiple chromium mystery processes

Quoting golinux at dyne.org (golinux at dyne.org):

> I just noticed that chromium has started spawning multiple PIDs that
> start with this string:
>
> PID XXXX chromium --type=renderer --field-trial-handle=1
> --primordial-pipe-token= and on and on including lots of number
> sequences.
[...]
> I searched a bit, and gather that this is phoning home with who
> knows what information about my habits.  That can't be a good thing.
> Does anyone know how to kill it?  Is there something comparable to
> about:config in chromium?

Possibly you've already seen http://raeknowler.com/wtf-chromium .
That doesn't have a solution, exactly, but does provide more detail.

Also,
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/chromium-dev/6V-OhvCMxJE/EZR_jpPFCAAJ
says:

  While I believe you cannot disable field trials altogether, you can at
  least identify them by going to chrome://net-internals/#capture and
  clicking on "Stop". The "Active Field Trial Groups" shows their names.
  Then, I believe you can disable them one by o≈ne (or create a script that
  takes the names and creates a command line disabling all of them) using
  some command flag.

  (Of course, in case it does not list all of the available (not
  necessarily enabled) field trials, then some field trial may be added
  the next time you launch Chrome. Wash, rinse, repeat)

'T'would be nice if the De??an package maintainer performed a
field-trial-ecetomy.

Seems like there's an 'ungoogled-chromium' fork that has this covered:
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/blob/master/patches/bromite/disable-fetching-field-trials.patch
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium




The http://raeknowler.com/wtf-chromium link has quite a bit about how
obnoxious and obtrusive this 'field trial' stuff is, in Google's
mainline Chromium browser (and of course in Google Chrome).  

The https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium link is also
enlightening -- in revealing all of the many 'phone home' features and
background services Google builds into both browsers, that the
'ungoogled chromium' maintainer then removes.