x11 Forwarding: Google Chrome and Chromium browsers grey out, other apps show OK

At my work where we use X11 servers and in a lab environment, Google Chrome and Chromium Browser display as a grey panel when forwarded through SSH X11.

This is happening on Ubuntu 16.04 & 18.04 and LinuxMint 19.2 & 19.3. Basically I initiate an X11 session like any other:

ssh -X username@xserver##.domain.com 

And I see this bloody thing:

FYI: No other applications seem to do this. Firefox, LibreOffice, Etc work fine.

In the terminal that launches the application, the only clear errors are relating to Google policies and FontService. If anyone has any suggestions on how to resolve this grey panel issue please let me know. I'm willing to attach logs, though be aware that they may be a tad censored for privacy reasons.

2 Answers

Ran into the same issue - looks like there's a bug in the chrome version we're running. The solution below worked for me.

Set the following env variables before running google-chrome from an SSH session:

$ export QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1
$ export _X11_NO_MITSHM=1
$ export _MITSHM=0
$ google-chrome

Found this solution in a bug filed with the chromium team:

The temporary solution I came up with a couple weeks after encountering the issue is fairly simple, a launch flag that indicates a different rendering method.

When launching Google Chrome over X11, using the swift-shaders render bypasses the issue. Here is an example:

ssh -X username@xserver##.domain.com /path/chrome --use-gl=swiftshader

Here is a sample of my launcher:

ssh -Y -f -l username hostname /path/google-79.0/chrome --use-gl=swiftshader