[snap] Chromium snap starts slowly

Thanks for the report. However, reporting several different issues in one bug report is not helpful, it complicates tracking of the individual issues.

Regarding issue #1, can you run the following command in a terminal, wait for the chromium window to show, then close it, and share the output?

    snap run --trace-exec chromium

Issue #2 is a known bug: bug #1800260.

Issue #3 can be safely ignored, the warning is harmless.

snap run --trace-exec chromium
Gtk-Message: 18:32:40.563: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 18:32:40.622: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
[5362:5516:1007/183243.311274:ERROR:token_service_table.cc(140)] Failed to decrypt token for service AccountId-102562585832489293610
[5487:5487:1007/183244.184312:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(369)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[5487:5487:1007/183247.688629:ERROR:buffer_manager.cc(488)] [.DisplayCompositor]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_OPERATION : glBufferData: <- error from previous GL command

You need to close the application after the window became visible, for "snap run --trace-exec" to display useful information about what system calls are consuming CPU time at startup.

Gtk-Message: 21:16:33.373: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 21:16:33.463: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
[2727:2897:1008/211636.183693:ERROR:token_service_table.cc(140)] Failed to decrypt token for service AccountId-102562585832489293610
[2869:2869:1008/211637.607402:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(369)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[2869:2869:1008/211641.021952:ERROR:buffer_manager.cc(488)] [.DisplayCompositor]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_OPERATION : glBufferData: <- error from previous GL command
Slowest 10 exec calls during snap run:
  0.593s snap-update-ns
  1.130s /usr/lib/snapd/snap-confine
  1.472s /snap/chromium/861/bin/desktop-launch
  0.214s /usr/bin/dbus-send
  0.235s /snap/chromium/861/bin/chromium.launcher
  0.278s /usr/bin/dbus-send
  0.361s /usr/bin/xdg-settings
  20.135s /proc/self/exe
  28.398s /snap/chromium/861/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chrome
  20.416s /proc/self/exe
Total time: 31.631s

To compare,

~$ time ~/chromium-browser/chrome
[5072:5072:1008/212843.785778:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(369)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[5072:5072:1008/212844.165025:ERROR:buffer_manager.cc(488)] [.DisplayCompositor]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_OPERATION : glBufferData: <- error from previous GL command

real 0m5.087s
user 0m6.032s
sys 0m1.318s

The status is NOT incomplete, as I am writing from the Chromium browser taken OFF the snap, leaner and snappier. Have a good day!

It cannot be corrected, can it?

I'm not following you. What cannot be corrected?

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

18.04.3 chromium snap start serious slow. Im not try yet deb but preinstalled firefox just opening 2 sec.

I'm also experiencing very slow Chromium with the new Snap (both during startup and stuttering during runtime). I've done some cursory profiling and it looks like the culprit is SquashFS with lzma. LZMA by itself is very slow to decompress (zstd would be much more appropriate for snaps, being much faster and only a tiny bit bigger) and SquashFS is very slow because of the way IO is done and caching. Google even carries custom patches for Android (https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/topic:squashfs) since it's so slow, but they weren't upstreamed because they removed an old caching mechanism that the maintainers wanted to keep (https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/833639/).

If Ubuntu wants to ship important software (like Chromium) as Snaps, you really need to fix both of those things, because right now it's nearly unacceptably slow (even on a beefy system with NVMe Flash/8 Cores/32GiB RAM). Using EROFS would also work, but since that is not available in the current Ubuntu kernel that is unlikely to happen.

Lorenz, would you mind sharing your insights on squashfs with LZMA performance on the snapcraft forums (https://forum.snapcraft.io/) ?

I'm sure the snapd team would be interested in looking at potential performance improvements.

@lorenz-x note that all snaps today actually use XZ compression, not LZMA. I did some investigation into which compression option would give the best performance for snaps on the snapcraft forum at https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/squashfs-performance-effect-on-snap-startup-time/13920. We would appreciate your input there where we (the snapd team) have more visibility on the issue.

"note that all snaps today actually use XZ compression, not LZMA."

xz = LZMA2 ( https://tukaani.org/xz/ ) which I guess is what was referenced above.

Ah sorry my apologies I confused LZMA and LZO...

APT forced me to stop using the DEB version and start using the Snap version and I can confirm it is much slower to start on Ubuntu 19.10 (5.3.0-26)

Turn off hardware acceleration did the job for me.
See: https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/2331445?hl=en

Sorry, it is not the hardware acceleration. Strange enough, the slow startup only happens at first startup (some 30secs) and disappears thereafter.

~$ snap run --trace-exec chromium
Gtk-Message: 16:49:03.254: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 16:49:03.441: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
[3303:3303:0308/164903.689952:ERROR:edid_parser.cc(102)] Too short EDID data: manufacturer id
[3446:1:0308/164908.592828:ERROR:child_process_sandbox_support_impl_linux.cc(79)] FontService unique font name matching request did not receive a response.
[3446:1:0308/164908.606411:ERROR:child_process_sandbox_support_impl_linux.cc(79)] FontService unique font name matching request did not receive a response.
[3303:3433:0308/164910.260469:ERROR:udev_watcher.cc(96)] Failed to begin udev enumeration.
Slowest 10 exec calls during snap run:
  0.218s snap-update-ns
  0.387s /snap/core/8689/usr/lib/snapd/snap-confine
  0.178s /usr/lib/snapd/snap-exec
  0.679s /snap/chromium/1043/bin/desktop-launch
  0.214s /snap/chromium/1043/bin/chromium.launcher
  0.248s /usr/bin/dbus-send
  0.307s /usr/bin/xdg-settings
  37.788s /proc/self/exe
  42.106s /snap/chromium/1043/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chrome
  37.914s /proc/self/exe
Total time: 43.673s

~$ snap run --trace-exec chromium
Gtk-Message: 16:51:42.452: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 16:51:42.460: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
[4082:4082:0308/165142.507754:ERROR:edid_parser.cc(102)] Too short EDID data: manufacturer id
[4227:1:0308/165144.923011:ERROR:child_process_sandbox_support_impl_linux.cc(79)] FontService unique font name matching request did not receive a response.
[4227:1:0308/165144.932876:ERROR:child_process_sandbox_support_impl_linux.cc(79)] FontService unique font name matching request did not receive a response.
Slowest 10 exec calls during snap run:
  0.168s /snap/core/8689/usr/lib/snapd/snap-confine
  0.025s /bin/ln
  0.428s /snap/chromium/1043/bin/desktop-launch
  0.037s /usr/bin/cut
  0.035s /usr/bin/dbus-send
  0.036s /usr/bin/dbus-send
  0.124s /snap/chromium/1043/bin/chromium.launcher
  3.882s /proc/self/exe
  5.419s /snap/chromium/1043/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chrome
  3.898s /proc/self/exe
Total time: 6.222s

~$ snap run --trace-exec chromium
Gtk-Message: 16:51:59.566: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 16:51:59.585: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
[4299:4299:0308/165159.637753:ERROR:edid_parser.cc(102)] Too short EDID data: manufacturer id
[4448:1:0308/165201.970950:ERROR:child_process_sandbox_support_impl_linux.cc(79)] FontService unique font name matching request did not receive a response.
[4448:1:0308/165201.975635:ERROR:child_process_sandbox_support_impl_linux.cc(79)] FontService unique font name matching request did not receive a response.
Slowest 10 exec calls during snap run:
  0.166s /snap/core/8689/usr/lib/snapd/snap-confine
  0.025s /bin/ln
  0.426s /snap/chromium/1043/bin/desktop-launch
  0.037s /usr/bin/cut
  0.038s /usr/bin/dbus-send
  0.034s /usr/bin/dbus-send
  0.125s /snap/chromium/1043/bin/chromium.launcher
  3.159s /proc/self/exe
  4.570s /snap/chromium/1043/usr/lib/chromium-brow...

Same problem for me,
I hate snap more and more

Chromium snap starts slowly also in 20.10 Hirsute.