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Chromium 68 with updated Widevine plugin

chromium_iconLast week, Chromium 68 was introduced to the “Stable Channel” with lots of bugs fixed, many of those being security fixes (42 in total). And a few days ago an update was released, so I decided to build Chromium 68 for Slackware.

NOTE: starting with Chromium 68, the browser will show a “Not secure” warning on all HTTP pages. Google announced this in a blog post published on February 8th on Google’s Chromium and Online Security blogs.

You’ll find 32bit as well as 64bit packages for Chromium 68.0.3440.84 in my package repository. They are available for both Slackware 14.2 and -current. I have also updated the Chromium Widevine plugin to version 1.4.9.1088. The older version refused to work with Chromium 68. Note that the Widevine plugin is available for 32bit just as for the 64bit browser, so even those running older computers (or those of you who are in need of a 32bit OS) can enjoy DRM movie playback.

For newcomers: Widevine is a Content Decryption Module (CDM) used by Netflix to stream video to your computer in a Chromium browser window. With my chromium and chromium-widevine-plugin packages you no longer need Chrome (or Firefox if you dislike that browser), to watch Netflix.

Also note (to the purists among you): even though support for Widevine CDM plugin has been built into my chromium package, that package is still built from Open Source software only. As long as you do not install the chromium-widevine-plugin package, your system will not be tainted by closed-source code.

Chromium packages: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/)
Widevine packages: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium-widevine-plugin/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium-widevine-plugin/)

10 Comments

  1. Desiderius

    Hi all
    Just installed Chromium 68 by upgradepkg and when lauching it crashes with this message :
    ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.
    [19067:19067:0804/172057.033589:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(378)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
    [19034:19060:0804/172057.136091:FATAL:nss_util.cc(655)] NSS_VersionCheck(“3.26”) failed. NSS >= 3.26 is required. Please upgrade to the latest NSS, and if you still get this error, contact your distribution maintainer.
    #0 0x561a673e469c
    #1 0x561a6736e7a0
    #2 0x561a67b1cd15
    #3 0x561a679365f8
    #4 0x561a67938ba5
    #5 0x561a6792755c
    #6 0x561a6794033e
    #7 0x561a67940a3f
    #8 0x561a679408db
    #9 0x561a65b54e3b
    #10 0x561a673b9c7c
    #11 0x561a673b9e95
    #12 0x561a6735a5dc
    #13 0x561a673afe5d
    #14 0x561a673f1573
    #15 0x561a673af74f
    #16 0x561a673acbff
    #17 0x561a673aca04
    #18 0x561a673f1b9d
    #19 0x7f6a026a3684 start_thread
    #20 0x7f69fc602efd __clone

    Received signal 6
    #0 0x561a673e469c
    #1 0x561a673e4201
    #2 0x7f6a026ad3b0
    #3 0x7f69fc5313f8 __GI_raise
    #4 0x7f69fc532ffa __GI_abort
    #5 0x561a673e3055
    #6 0x561a6736ec09
    #7 0x561a67b1cd15
    #8 0x561a679365f8
    #9 0x561a67938ba5
    #10 0x561a6792755c
    #11 0x561a6794033e
    #12 0x561a67940a3f
    #13 0x561a679408db
    #14 0x561a65b54e3b
    #15 0x561a673b9c7c
    #16 0x561a673b9e95
    #17 0x561a6735a5dc
    #18 0x561a673afe5d
    #19 0x561a673f1573
    #20 0x561a673af74f
    #21 0x561a673acbff
    #22 0x561a673aca04
    #23 0x561a673f1b9d
    #24 0x7f6a026a3684 start_thread
    #25 0x7f69fc602efd __clone
    r8: 00007f69fc8c1770 r9: 00007f69c97fa700 r10: 0000000000000008 r11: 0000000000000206
    r12: 00007f69c97f8fa8 r13: 00000000000000da r14: 00007f69c97f8fb0 r15: 00007f69c97f8fb8
    di: 0000000000004a5a si: 0000000000004a74 bp: 00007f69c97f8aa0 bx: 00007f69c97f8b10
    dx: 0000000000000006 ax: 0000000000000000 cx: 00007f69fc5313f8 sp: 00007f69c97f8968
    ip: 00007f69fc5313f8 efl: 0000000000000206 cgf: 0000000000000033 erf: 0000000000000000
    trp: 0000000000000000 msk: 0000000000000000 cr2: 0000000000000000
    [end of stack trace]
    Calling _exit(1). Core file will not be generated.

  2. alienbob

    Desiderius, are you running an un-patched Slackware 14.2 perhaps? I compiled my chromium on a fully patched Slackware 14.2 which contains a newer mozilla-nss package than the default install of Slackware 14.2 offers.
    If that is the case, please upgrade to the latest set of patch packages.

  3. Desiderius

    Thanks Eric
    I missed this patch !
    After ugrading mozilla-nss it works fine !

  4. Glen Strom

    Eric:

    When I try to connect to https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/ I get this message:

    Your connection is not secure

    The owner of slackware.nl has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.

    I’m using Slackware 14.2 64-bit and Firefox 61.0.1.

  5. Glen Strom

    Adding to my previous post, I missed an important part of the message:

    slackware.nl uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because it was signed using a signature algorithm that was disabled because that algorithm is not secure.

  6. alienbob

    Glen, please follow the instructions in https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/adding-cacert-root-certificates-to-your-slackware/

  7. Glen Strom

    Thanks, Eric. Everything is fine now.

  8. alienbob

    I updated the article a wee bit. It was not clear that Firefox is able to play Netflix too, if you enable “play DRM-content” in the settings. Firefox browser will download the Widevine CDM plugin only if you enable that checkbox, i.e. Firefox is pure open source by default just like Chromium.
    Whether you use Chromium or Firefox is purely a matter of preference. I do not force anyone to use either of the two.

  9. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric!

  10. Hannibal

    > NOTE: starting with Chromium 68, the browser will show a “Not secure” warning on all HTTP pages

    This can be changed on chrome://flags page with option “Mark non-secure origins as non-secure” set to disabled.

    BTW. Thanks Eric for all your works!

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