Google Chrome 54 Crash on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Workaround

February 23, 2017

google-chrome-stable_54.0.2840.71-1_amd64.deb and google-chrome-stable_54.0.2840.59-1_amd64.deb are remarkably broken on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It will run and then randomly crash after several minutes without fail. By crash, I mean Chrome simply segfaults and goes away with it just sitting there in the background not even in use.

Here's what dmesg spits out:

[22831.394558] Chrome_IOThread[8577]: segfault at fffffea0a79bed4e ip 0000559188a4f163 sp 00007f8e67d0f330 error 5 in chrome[559185625000+6432000]
[23828.498347] Chrome_IOThread[10840]: segfault at fffff096c00151a4 ip 0000556a190a2163 sp 00007ff89f52d330 error 5 in chrome[556a15c78000+6432000]
[25639.709159] Chrome_IOThread[11878]: segfault at fffff556dc7d7751 ip 0000555de0f49163 sp 00007fcb95aa5330 error 5 in chrome[555dddb1f000+6432000]
[26293.987158] Chrome_IOThread[14778]: segfault at fffff6715f04fa5b ip 000055fbd9c34163 sp 00007f2f906de330 error 5 in chrome[55fbd680a000+6432000]
[28101.945315] Chrome_IOThread[15894]: segfault at ffffc14373271d47 ip 0000561d43b5c163 sp 00007f3be29c5330 error 5 in chrome[561d40732000+6432000]
[28650.319620] Chrome_IOThread[19474]: segfault at ffffcce1879e3be6 ip 00005569f36fcf23 sp 00007fce06e22350 error 5 in chrome[5569f02e0000+64e8000]
[31746.234309] Chrome_IOThread[21529]: segfault at ffffc711cc45d1d7 ip 000056088483c163 sp 00007f58f7cb6330 error 5 in chrome[560881412000+6432000]
[53541.645677] Chrome_IOThread[26484]: segfault at ffffe087551bcee8 ip 0000562dced1b163 sp 00007fc7cfc3b330 error 5 in chrome[562dcb8f1000+6432000]
[54315.038749] Chrome_IOThread[27160]: segfault at ffffef1bc6634c75 ip 0000564fa0201163 sp 00007f9317b9b330 error 5 in chrome[564f9cdd7000+6432000]
[82818.877049] Chrome_IOThread[31460]: segfault at ffffd6fc903b5edc ip 000055bd19033163 sp 00007fb703411330 error 5 in chrome[55bd15c09000+6432000]

I noticed this started happening right after an update to Chrome 54 from Chrome 53. So, I reverted back to the previous 53 package I had cached and all is normal again.

cd  /var/cache/apt/archives
ls *chrome*
sudo dpkg -P google-chrome-stable
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_53.0.2785.143-1_amd64.deb

Well, all is normal again except now every time I start Google Chrome 53 is gives me a warning that version 53 is no longer supported.

As it turns out, this looks to be a big problem. Others are reporting it still happens on Chrome 55. I have not tested anything else.

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