#1150608 chromium: [ppc64le] Fails to start normally on POWER9 unless --no-sandbox --no-zygote are used

Package:
chromium
Source:
chromium
Description:
web browser
Submitter:
Maurizio M.
Date:
2026-10-16 17:05:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1150608#5
Date:
2026-10-11 10:19:29 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Debian Chromium Maintainers,

I am writing to report a startup issue with the Chromium package on the ppc64le architecture (running on a POWER9 workstation).

When attempting to launch Chromium normally, the application crashes or fails to start up. However, after troubleshooting, we discovered that the browser successfully launches and operates stably when bypassing the sandbox and zygote mechanisms using the following flags:

    chromium --no-zygote --no-sandbox

This strongly suggests that there is an issue related to sandbox initialization, seccomp filters, or the zygote process fork handling specifically on the ppc64le architecture.

Thank you very much for your time, your hard work, and for maintaining Chromium on Debian.

Best regards,

Maurizio M.
Italy
#1150608#10
Date:
2026-10-11 15:57:27 UTC
From:
To:
I'm not able to reproduce.  Are you using a GPU or software rendering only?  Can you post the output of starting Chromium from the command line without the --no-sandbox --no-zygote options passed?

Thanks!
#1150608#15
Date:
2026-10-16 16:57:45 UTC
From:
To:
While I cannot reproduce on my local systems, a potentially related error in the seccomp logic was found and corrected.  Please test and reopen this bug if it is not fixed on your system.