Chromium and Chrome crashing too often (Ubuntu 14.04)

Question

So, something weird has been happening this week. Chrome and Chromium have started to freeze and subsequently crash. My system keeps going on fine, but Chrome and Chromium freeze and then close up. The only think I can think of that may be causing this is the number of tabs I have open (several dozen).

Anyway, when I open them back up, I get the home page with the option to restore. I click restore and everything starts to load, then it freezes and crashes again, and everything closes. So I cannot restore the session at all. (By the way, is there a way I can get a list of the websites I had open? I cannot restore chrome or chromium without them crashing so I can't access any of my tabs.)

It seems this person is having similar problems: chrome crashing too often in Ubuntu 14.04. I tried the solution proposed there but it did not help. I don't even know how to debug this issue. Any help? Thanks!

Chromium 37.0.2062.120 Ubuntu 14.04 and Google Chrome 38.0.2125.104

EDIT

I ran it from the terminal and got these errors. Will try the limits.conf approach with the reboot tonight.

[WARNING:flash/platform/pepper/pep_module.cpp(63)] SANDBOXED
[11401:11401:1028/111248:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(206)] /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.24.23/gdk/x11/gdkdrawable-x11.c:942 drawable is not a native X11 window (http://bugs.chromium.org/329991)
[11401:11438:1028/111248:ERROR:connection.cc(1060)] AppCache sqlite error 14, errno 0: unable to open database file, sql: SELECT cache_id, url, flags, response_id, response_size FROM Entries  WHERE url = ?
[11401:11438:1028/111248:ERROR:connection.cc(1060)] AppCache sqlite error 14, errno 0: unable to open database file, sql: SELECT cache_id, origin, type, namespace_url, target_url, is_pattern  FROM Namespaces WHERE origin = ?
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(223)] CommandBufferProxy::Initialize failed.
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(243)] Failed to initialize command buffer.
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.3tNbYP failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.4i6wXZ failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.ictTW9 failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.hnPgWj failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.xc3EVt failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.5ag4UD failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.YEluUN failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.PDiVTX failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.d48mT7 failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.3pYPSh failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.goJjSr failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.4ZrORB failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.4dHkRL failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.Fq7SQV failed: Too many open files
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.wT20R5 failed: Too many open files
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(223)] CommandBufferProxy::Initialize failed.
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(243)] Failed to initialize command buffer.
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.hcPdUf failed: Too many open files
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(223)] CommandBufferProxy::Initialize failed.
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(243)] Failed to initialize command buffer.
[11401:11441:1028/111248:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.wuAOYp failed: Too many open files
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(223)] CommandBufferProxy::Initialize failed.
[417:429:1028/111248:ERROR:webgraphicscontext3d_command_buffer_impl.cc(243)] Failed to initialize command buffer.
[11401:11401:1028/111248:ERROR:ipc_channel_posix.cc(213)] socketpair(): Too many open files
Aborted (core dumped)

Solution 1

Chrome is crashing because it cannot open additional files.

You can fix this by increasing the number of possible open files.

Update /etc/security/limits.conf

* hard nofile 65535
* soft nofile 65535

And rebooting.

Solution 2

Before updating limits.conf as suggested by Thijs, try if it works for you. In a shell, run:

ulimit -a

Check the line that reads open files (or run ulimit -n right away). On my system, the value is 1024. Quit Chromium. Then, in the same terminal, issue

ulimit -n 4096
chromium-browser

Replace 4096 by a value suitable for your system. You should be able to use more tabs in this browser session. Once you have found a reasonable limit, persist it in limits.conf and reboot.

References:

• https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=269936
• https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=384654
• https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/180063/19205

Comments

[Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy]

open chrome through terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T, then run google-chrome or chromium-browser), and see what are some of the last messages printed in the terminal before it crashes

[MadMike]

Could you please add what makes you think this will solve the problem?

[Kevin Bowen]

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.