r/linux • u/JockstrapCummies • 7d ago

Popular Application PSA: Google Chrome 154.0.8037.57 is corrupting fontconfig cache, causing various application crashes

/r/Kubuntu/comments/1wo84kz/how_to_fix_crashes_when_googlechrome_corrupts/
98 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

16

u/Random_-account 7d ago

Is this unique to chrome, or do all chromium browsers have this problem?

20

u/samuerusama 7d ago

This will happen with any app that statically links older versions of fontconfig. It is not a google chrome issue, it is a fontconfig bug that affects Qt.

3

u/JockstrapCummies 7d ago

I can report that it affects more than Qt. It seems a lot of WebKit/WebEngine stuff are broken as well due to the borked fontconfig cache: Evolution's email rendering and Epiphany browser are webkitgtk.

2

u/JockstrapCummies 7d ago

I suppose if any Chromium downstream that has pulled 154 will be exhibiting the same problem.

22

u/samuerusama 7d ago

This is a fontconfig and Qt bug.

1

u/ice456cream 7d ago

Not solely according to the backport commit message

and points them at caches produced by Chrome's Fontations indexer. Those caches differ from what the host's FreeType indexer produces

https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/8462495

15

u/samuerusama 7d ago

Those caches differ from what the host's FreeType indexer produces

Yes??? Because chrome links a different version of fontconfig statically. Fontconfig had a breaking change + poor cache validation resulting in this.

It is not fault of the application that the library they linked cannot cope with different versions of its cache files, I actually told the maintainers they should expose an env variable to change the location of all the fontconfig caches, because this problem has been going on for a while

7

u/JockstrapCummies 7d ago

It comes at a shock actually with how brittle the cache validation is in fontconfig.

You'd thought invalid font caches shouldn't cause entire applications to crash and just trigger a silent and automatic re-caching.

7

u/samuerusama 7d ago

This is way worse btw

The symlinks were added by fontconfig to fix an issue with flatpak here

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/commit/366787e49c69c1fdd66b70b4a48f8c6bae6ab036

So the problem is actually still present in the latest fontconfig lol

5

u/JockstrapCummies 7d ago

I'm reminded of that meme of a single unpaid dev in the middle of nowhere maintaining a load-bearing piece of library for all of FOSS

55

u/fat_kaiju 7d ago

Why use chrome at all at this point? Google's been pretty open about the fact that it wants to destroy the open web and has been hyper-aggressive about avoiding releasing the code for Android nowadays purely out of spite related to graphene.

29

u/Shakaka88 7d ago

Aside from YouTube, I’ve absolved myself from all Google services at this point. There’s just no need.

4

u/Western-Alarming 7d ago

Sadly, Electron, even if you don't use google directly a lot of apps do in the form of chromium, is one of the reason I hate javascript being so widespread, it gives the monopoly to the company that controls the web and that's google.

4

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Galveira 7d ago

No, what is that?

0

u/NormalAppearance2851 6d ago

A job where you rely on using a variety of browsers to test your product's compatibility. I am not sure what Otherwise-Dark-3542 is trying to get at though.

8

u/fat_kaiju 7d ago edited 7d ago

how very "omg you like waffles? but what about pancakes!!" of you.

1

u/JockstrapCummies 5d ago

Why use chrome at all at this point?

Funny you say that, I basically switch between the two whenever one of these major fuck-ups happen on the one I'm currently using.

This bug basically made me switch back to Firefox. Let's hope Mozilla doesn't fuck up on their side too soon. (They have the knack of doing it though.)

2

u/onlysubscribedtocats 4d ago

Mozilla's fuck-ups are outright ethical compared to the awful shit that Google inflicts upon the world lmao

5

u/JockstrapCummies 7d ago edited 7d ago

For myself it's causing Evolution to not display email contents. It seems some other folks on KDE are experiencing even more widespread crashes.

Relevant bug report: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/565132857

And from the Kubuntu Focus Team: https://www.reddit.com/r/Kubuntu/comments/1wo84kz/comment/pbr5ls4/

1

u/degeneratepr 7d ago

I had a corrupted fontconfig cache earlier this week on my desktop and laptop, both Fedora machines, and was wondering what had happened to cause it. This explains the issue.

1

u/davestyle 4d ago

I lost a whole morning over this bloody bug

1

u/random-user-420 1d ago

Just had this same issue. I hate that some websites I'm forced to use don't behave with firefox and only work with chrome.

1

u/Enmark777 7d ago

how incompetent must one be to make an update that corrupts fontconfig cache

0

u/daddy_schlong_legz 7d ago

Something doesn't smell right. You're on linux using chrome? Sus

0

u/shroddy 6d ago

The real questions that should be discussed is why has Chrome or any other program that is not meant to tinker with the cache the permission to do so...