Can't get Google Chrome to X11 forward but Firefox does

Question

So after much trial and error I have managed to get X11 forwarding work. My desktop in the office is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and I use XQuartz to ssh in from my MacBook Pro. When I ssh in, I get the following on the terminal:

Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-128-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

I know the X11 forwarding is working because I can get FireFox to forward, but its extremely slow and buggy.

But I cannot get Google Chrome to forward. The terminal gives the following on running the command google-chrome:

ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
[10497:10497:0702/053002.891053:ERROR:gl_context_glx.cc(227)] Couldn't make context current with X drawable.
[10497:10497:0702/053002.891090:ERROR:gpu_info_collector.cc(63)] gl::GLContext::MakeCurrent() failed
[10455:10549:0702/053003.740008:ERROR:bus.cc(394)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")

and XQuartz just displays a blank window. On ctrl-cing the process and exiting the terminal further spews more error messages (which I can post if required). But can someone help me out and tell me what I am doing wrong or if I have not got x11 forwarding set up properly? I basically followed the procedure here (also xauth was already installed for me) so I just edited the configuration files.

Solution 1

Try starting Chrome using its SwiftShader software renderer - which was integrated into Chrome in 2017:

chromium-browser --use-gl=swiftshader

Solution 2

Chrome has hardware acceleration turned on by default, and I think this is causing you the issue. Try starting it with:

google-chrome --disable-gpu

Comments

[Luc]

For me, even Chromium works, as well as literally every other software I've tried, only Google Chrome doesn't work. The --disable-gpu flag did not help for me.

[p4t]

Are you saying we should disable hardware acceleration on Chrome browser on client side or server side?

[Trent]

This flag should be passed to the server side, since Chrome is running on the server and is forwarded via X11

[Gabrer]

On Ubuntu 18.04 this worked for me using google-chrome command; while --disable-gpu didn't

[Mayko]

On RHEL 7 this worked for me using google-chrome command; while --disable-gpu didn't