15 February 2016 by Lars Vilhuber
The joys of Linux kernels, distros, and Google Chrome
One tends to think of something like a web browser being very much disconnected from the intricacies of Linux kernels. But Google Chrome regularly tries to interface in very deep ways, either with the kernel or the X11 graphical system. One recent example is:
Check failed: NamespaceUtils::WriteToIdMapFile("/proc/self/gid_map", gid_)
As usual, Google (not Chrome) is the answer, leading (in this case) to https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/EAc_PuY9uh0.
Two tips from my experience running a triple-monitor workstation with virtual machines (VMware, VirtualBox) and Nvidia drivers: keep older kernels around, and keep the installation materials (Nvidia) around. Â In my case, each kernel upgrade requires a re-install of the Nvidia drivers (there are probably more elegant ways of doing this, but I didn’t do those), and keeping kernels around in case that doesn’t work. To keep multiple kernels around (live, installed on the system), go to /etc/zypp/, and (as sudo) edit zypp.conf to contain the following lines:
multiversion = provides:multiversion(kernel) multiversion.kernels = latest,latest-1,latest-2,latest-3,running
which keeps the last four kernels around. Switching back to previous kernel is as easy as choosing it manually in Grub, or setting a specific kernel as the default boot of grub in Yast -> Bootloader