Can't Configure Chrome Remote Desktop

Question

I'm trying to use Chrome Remote Desktop to access my machine from a Mac. When I try the "enable remote connections" step it tries for a while then times out with error "failed to start remote access service." If I close the window, then my machine shows up and says "(last online 3:49:58 PM)" where the time is the time I attempted to start the service.

I've tried reinstalling chrome and chrome remote desktop and following the instructions in this question. I can connect to my computer through the "remote assistance," and I can connect to my Mac from my linux machine. Any other ideas?

Solution 1

I think I figured out what was going on. First I deleted my chrome remote desktop installation and all config files associated with google chrome. Then I reinstalled, and followed these edits here so I could remote in to the current session. It worked for about 24 hours, then it failed to connect after that.

So I deleted everything again, and reinstalled without configuring it to connect to the current session. It has been working fine now. In short, you used to be able to edit the code to connect to the current session, but with the recent update this now causes errors.

Solution 2

~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop Not Found

I had a highly specific issue with ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop not being found, and fixed it with:

mkdir -p ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop
chown "$USER:$USER" ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop
chmod a+rx ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop

Then

1. I uninstalled the Chrome-Remote-Desktop extension
2. I made sure I was logged into my Google Account both in my browser's profile and at google.com
3. I ran dpkg --pure chrome-remote-desktop to remove the former installation
4. I Ctrl+F5 at https://remotedesktop.google.com before trying to reinstall it

(Open the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T, then paste the above commands into the terminal. If you encounter errors, prefix each command (line of text) that errored with sudo)

How To Perform Your Own Assessment Of The Problem

The solution to my problem might not be the solution that works for you, so let me show you how I found my solution so you can find your own. First, we need to get the status log:

username@hostname:~$ service "chrome-remote-desktop@$USER" status
● chrome-remote-desktop.service - LSB: Chrome Remote Desktop service
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/chrome-remote-desktop; generated)
     Active: active (exited) since Fri 2020-07-24 17:11:25 EDT; 22s ago
       Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 28767)
     Memory: 0B
     CGroup: /system.slice/chrome-remote-desktop.service

Jul 24 17:11:25 hostname systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Chrome Remote Desktop service...
Jul 24 17:11:25 hostname systemd[1]: Started LSB: Chrome Remote Desktop service.

In order to get it to start logging, I had to do:

username@hostname:~$ usermod -a -G chrome-remote-desktop "$USER"
username@hostname:~$ sudo service "chrome-remote-desktop@$USER" restart
username@hostname:~$ service "chrome-remote-desktop@$USER" status
● chrome-remote-desktop.service - LSB: Chrome Remote Desktop service
 Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/chrome-remote-desktop; generated)
 Active: active (exited) since Fri 2020-07-24 17:12:16 EDT; 13s ago
   Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 125177 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/chrome-remote-desktop start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname sudo[125187]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user username by (uid=0)
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname chrome-remote-desktop[125197]: [0724/171216.183432:INFO:remoting_user_session.cc(738)] Daemon process started in the background, logging to '/tmp/chrome_remote_desktop_20200724_>
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname user-session[125198]: pam_unix(chrome-remote-desktop:session): session opened for user username by (uid=1000)
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname chrome-remote-desktop[125195]: WARNING: This system uses GDM. Some GDM versions have a bug that prevents local login while Chrome Remote Desktop is running. If you run into this>
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname chrome-remote-desktop[125195]: Cleanup.
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname chrome-remote-desktop[125195]: Log file: /tmp/chrome_remote_desktop_20200724_171216_b4R1oT
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname user-session[125198]: pam_unix(chrome-remote-desktop:session): session closed for user username
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname sudo[125187]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user username
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname chrome-remote-desktop[125177]:    ...fail!
Jul 24 17:12:16 hostname systemd[1]: Started LSB: Chrome Remote Desktop service.

Now, let's see the contents of that log file:

username@hostname:~$ cat /tmp/chrome_remote_desktop_20200724_171216_b4R1oT
2020-07-24 17:15:10,835:WARNING:WARNING: This system uses GDM. Some GDM versions have a bug that prevents local login while Chrome Remote Desktop is running. If you run into this issue, you can stop Chrome Remote Desktop by visiting https://remotedesktop.google.com/access on another machine and clicking the delete icon next to this machine. It may take up to five minutes for the Chrome Remote Desktop to exit on this machine and for local login to start working again.
Failed to load config: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/username/.config/chrome-remote-desktop/host#98a9a95d871bdecaeb1ebddc57c9cdfe.json'
2020-07-24 17:15:10,836:INFO:Cleanup.

It says "No such file or directory", so I created that directory, as described in the steps at the top, and that fixed the problem.

Solution 3

The Chromium-browser and Chrome are probably different browsers. Probably, Google cannot give some tokens to the Chromium. Because of the reason, you can carry on the following steps for using chrome-remote-desktop on ubuntu. After this installation, two chrome application is available on your computer. The real one is red-green-yellow colored.

It is tried and worked on my Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS desktop.

• Just install real Chrome from https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/desktop/. Then install it in your computer.

• Download Chrome Remote Desktop from https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/chrome-remote-desktop_current_amd64.deb or from the google official site.Then install it in your computer.

• Add Chrome Remote Desktop extension to the Chrome (the real one)

• Login to the google by your google account.

• Launch the Chrome Remote Desktop Application from the extension or in the ubuntu application launcher.

Thats All, Enjoy.

Comments

[Redbob]

What is your Ubuntu release? I tested with Lubuntu 17.04, it seems running fine. I followed instructions here at this page

[jswien]

I'm in 16.04 LTS. I tried following those instructions and got the same error. I think it might be something unique to my machine or google chrome profile. Sometimes when trying to set it up I get the message that the machine is registered to another chrome user, and then I delete the machine and can try again.

[Redbob]

The profile issue is a valid suggestion. Try to do this: close google-chrome, rename ~/.config/google-chrome folder and restart google-chrome, redo configuration. You will not need to reinstall deb and linux files, I think.

[S. N.]

Personally, I prefer your answer over the accepted one, because I can learn from it. I have problem with the same symptoms, but, possibly, of somewhat different nature. Thanks to your description I could start the investigation that bore some fruits. But finally, I got completely stuck and with the output of the usermod command of your instructions. Could you give me a hand? I described every thing I did in my thread askubuntu.com/questions/1351896/….

[João Soares]

This more complete answer is the one that actually helped me solve my problem on my Ubuntu based OS.