Bug 323143 – www-client/chromium{-bin}-9999: Could not initialize WebGL

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description fkhp 2010-06-08 06:20:52 UTC]

chromium-9999: from 6.0.409 to 6.0.428.0 (49144) with none works. only one of 6.0.408 worked before. 
chromium --enable-webgl --no-sandbox
http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson15/index.html 

fails, error message: Could not initialize WebGL



Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 fkhp 2010-06-08 06:27:32 UTC]

webgl works in firefox 3.7a5pre on the same gentoo system. so the system support webgl.

[Comment 2 fkhp 2010-06-09 09:05:24 UTC]

chromium --enable-webgl --in-process-webgl --no-sandbox http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson15/index.html 

chromium-bin  --enable-webgl --in-process-webgl --no-sandbox http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson15/index.html 

will not enable webgl in new opened chrome window if the chromium window has been opened. 

if exit all opened chromium windows then the command works.

[Comment 3 fkhp 2010-06-09 09:08:56 UTC]

previous bug report for chromium-bin-9999 and chromium-9999 might be the same case.

[Comment 4 Bernard Cafarelli 2010-06-09 15:15:42 UTC]

Probably yes, let's merge both bugs. And fixing -bin is more complicated (it usually means upstream fixed it)

You may be hitting this: 
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=21852#c30
(as the user explicitly mentions Gentoo)

[Comment 5 Bernard Cafarelli 2010-06-09 15:15:49 UTC]

*** Bug 322051 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 6 Bernard Cafarelli 2010-06-10 21:28:26 UTC]

Just updated to portage version 6.0.427.0, and I do see the Earth spinning

Which opengl implementation do you use? (eselect opengl) which video card?

The boxes I run chromium on all use nvidia binary driver, this may be the cause

[Comment 7 fkhp 2010-06-10 23:50:14 UTC]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Just updated to portage version 6.0.427.0, and I do see the Earth spinning
> 
> Which opengl implementation do you use? (eselect opengl) which video card?
> 
> The boxes I run chromium on all use nvidia binary driver, this may be the cause
> 
--enable-webgl  only take effect on the very first chromium window opened .

the step is important:
===== situation webgl fails: 
1. open chromium[-bin] without webgl being enabled and let the chromium[-bin] window keep opening
2 then from term run command:
chromium[-bin] --enable-webgl --no-sandbox http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson15/index.html

the opengi fails in the second window even though webgl was enabled with --enable-webgl, this is the case very likely to happen, as one usually opens the chromium without eanbling webgl, then want to try webgl from command line.

===== situation webgl works
1. close all chromium windows opened
2. chromium[-bin] --enable-webgl --no-sandbox http://learningwebgl.com/lessons/lesson15/index.html

 to try webgl, one  to close prevously opened chromium that started without webgl enabled. it's not convenient.

[Comment 8 Paweł Hajdan, Jr. (RETIRED) 2010-06-11 06:50:45 UTC]

Oh, if so then that's how it works, really. If you're not happy with that, you'd have to wait until WebGL is enabled by default (it will be at some point, I think).

Feel free to file an enhancement bug to make it easier to set default chromium launch arguments in Gentoo.