How to install 64-bit Google Chrome 28+ on 64-bit RHEL/CentOS 6 or 7

How to install 64-bit Google Chrome 28+ on 64-bit RHEL/CentOS 6 or 7

The problem

Google developers seem to think that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 - aka RHEL 6 - and its free equivalents (e.g. CentOS 6 and Scientific Linux 6) are no longer worth supporting at all w.r.t. their Google Chrome browser from version 28 onwards. This is mainly because Google are using very recent Linux build systems which produce backwards-incompatible binaries. This really isn't a wise move when you're shipping closed source binaries.

It seems Google missed the fact that RHEL/CentOS 6 are both fully supported by their respective maintainers until November 2020. Sadly, Mozilla Firefox 46+ has gone the same way - it has system requirements that RHEL/CentOS 6 no longer meets. Unfortunately, I've failed find a solution - the switch to GTK+3 with Firefox is just too difficult to workaround.

I've built Chromium from regularly pulled source code in the past for CentOS 5 and it's a tough job on that platform and I didn't want to do it again for CentOS 6. Note that RHEL/CentOS 7 users are also catered for, so please keep reading if you're on that platform. Also please note that 32-bit Google Chrome for Linux is no longer supported by Google and is no longer available for download.

The solution

By using a later libstdc++ library and putting it in a tree exclusively picked up by Google Chrome, you can indeed run the latest 64-bit Google Chrome on 64-bit RHEL/CentOS 6.6 or later. CentOS 6 systems need libstdc++ from a gcc 6.1.0 build (I supply a 339K download of that library from this site - if you are concerned about this, please read this explanation). There is also a small patch to the libgnome-keyring library required to resolve a missing symbol.

The download

It's strongly recommended that you run "yum update" as root (and reboot if this installs a new kernel) before you download and run the script below. This will often fix previously known issues when running Google Chrome.

install_chrome.sh 7.31 (15th May 2016 - wget is now installed/updated early on, added dbus and selinux-policy as new dependencies, out-of-date dependencies are now updated)

It's a bash shell script, so you download and run it as root as follows:

wget http://chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk/install_chrome.sh
chmod u+x install_chrome.sh
./install_chrome.sh

The script has optional command line arguments - here's the output of "./install_chrome.sh -h":

Syntax: ./install_chrome.sh [-b] [-d] [-f [-f [-f]]] [-h] [-n] [-q] [-s]
        [-t tmpdir] [-u] [-U]

-b (or --beta) will switch to beta versions (google-chrome-beta).
-d (or --delete) will delete the temporary directory used for downloads
   if an installation was successful.
-f (or --force) forces an automatic "y" for any interactive prompting
   except for OS mismatch/OS upgrade/reboot prompts. Specify -f twice to force
   it for OS mismatches or OS upgrades as well and three times for reboots
   on top of that.
-h (or -? or --help) will display this syntax message.
-n (or --dryrun) will show what actions the script will take,
   but it won't actually perform those actions.
-q (or --quiet) will switch to "quiet mode" where minimal info is displayed.
   Specify -q twice to go completely silent except for errors.
-s (or --stable) will switch to stable versions (google-chrome-stable),
   which is the default if -b or -U haven't previously been specified.
-t tmpdir (or --tmpdir tmpdir) will use tmpdir as the temporary directory
   parent tree rather than $TMPDIR (if set) or /tmp.
-u performs an uninstallation of Google Chrome and chrome-deps rather the
   default action of an installation.
-U (or --unstable) will switch to unstable versions (google-chrome-unstable).

I would recommend you read the comments at the top of the script and inspect the code carefully since you need to run it as root. It will perform a fair number of downloads to obtain what it needs and if it finishes successfully, you should be able to run the "google-chrome" command (or select it from the Internet category in your GNOME main menu) as a non-root user.

The support banner displayed by RHEL/CentOS 6 Google Chrome 48+

Google Chrome 48 onwards now checks the glibc version and will display a beige banner on startup that the environment is not supported if glibc is less than version 2.17 (which it is in RHEL/CentOS 6). Despite the banner, RHEL/CentOS 6 still runs the latest Google Chrome OK, but this may not be the case with future releases.

The dropping of NPAPI support for plug-ins (especially Java)

In a stunningly stupid move, Linux Google Chrome 35 onwards no longer supports the NPAPI plug-in protocol used by almost all browser plug-ins, instead preferring the PPAPI protocol. The biggest impact this has is to disable Java applets inside the browser, so if you need to use Java applets regularly, I'm afraid I'd have to recommend switching browsers (e.g. to Mozilla Firefox) until there's a Linux Java implementation that supports PPAPI.

The changelog

• Version 7.40 (15th May 2016):
  If wget isn't installed (e.g. it's a minimal CentOS 6 install) or it's
  out-of-date, download and install it. dbus and selinux-policy (if SELinux
  is enabled) dependencies have been added, which may help minimal installs.
  Note that if dbus isn't running on CentOS 6, it's now started and also
  enabled via chkconfig for future reboots. If any of the main dependencies
  are out-of-date, they will now be updated (this is particularly critical
  for nss and selinux-policy, which won't work on an unpatched 6.7 install).
• Version 7.31 (29th April 2016):
  The Google Chrome binary seems to dynamically load libexif.so.12 at
  runtime which caused me to miss libexif off the dependencies list, so
  it's finally been added in. A new gcc 6.1.0 release triggered an update to
  this script because a new matching libstdc++ library has been built for
  download. Updated the library build instructions (a little bit more than the
  usual gcc/library version number edits).
• Version 7.30 (5th March 2016):
  Google completely removed the 32-bit Linux Google Chrome repository a
  few days ago, so I have similarly removed 32-bit support from my script.
  Out-of-date kernels may have slipped through with a warning, so definitely
  enforce an error for them now.
• Version 7.24 (13th February 2016):
  Adjusted year references to 2016 - belated Happy New Year!
  Removed last mentions of LD_PRELOAD, though it could come back in
  a future release (oh no, the kittens...). Added 32-bit deprecation
  warning - it's likely the next script version will no longer support
  32-bit platforms. Use CentOS 7.2.1511 for 32-bit libstdc++ with 7.1.503
  as a fallback.
• Version 7.23 (15th December 2015):
  Forgot to bump the chrome-deps version with the 7.22 release, so it's been
  changed to version 3.12 (thanks to Steve Mowbray for spotting this).
  wget now uses the --no-cache option to bypass cached versions of files to
  avoid a cached version.dat screwing things up during script upgrades (yep,
  this happened in a big way with the 7.22 release). If you run a kernel
  older than 2.6.32-431.el6 and refuse (or fail) to upgrade it or refuse to
  reboot after such an upgrade, this is now considered a fatal error.
• Version 7.22 (12th December 2015):
  gcc 5.3.0 was released this month, so time to update libstdc++ again.
  A few users had noticed that I'd been letting pre-RHEL/CentOS 6.6 users continue
  with just a warning about Google Chrome not working on their OS. This very
  predictably caused problems later on, so this release now makes RHEL/CentOS
  6.6 a mandatory minimum.
• Version 7.21 (23rd July 2015):
  The recent gcc 5.2.0 release has meant that the downloadable libstdc++ has been
  rebuilt with that new release. A new libstdc++ checksum/size meant a new script
  release of course.
• Version 7.20 (7th June 2015):
  If the running kernel is too old (which causes Google Chrome to immediately crash),
  offer to update it and reboot. If you decline or the update fails, this is only
  a warning only at the moment, but it will be a fatal error in a future script
  release. I hadn't done a dry run (-n) for quite a while and John Stembridge
  spotted a couple of issues with it. Firstly, it output a wrong yum repo path
  and secondly it incorrectly tried to create a spec file - both issues have been
  fixed. No longer needed the ironically-titled remove_redundant_libs() function,
  so it's been removed.
• Version 7.13 (24th April 2015):
  Updated downloadable 64-bit libstdc++.so.6 to be one built with gcc 5.1.0.
  This changed the checksum and size (the latter increasing by 60%!), which
  is why there is a new release of the script with the new checksum/size
  values present. The library build
  instructions were also updated, including new
  --disable-multiarch and --disable-multilib flags, plus using the stage 3-built
  library instead of the stage 2 one.
• Version 7.12 (10th April 2015):
  CentOS 7 did its first "move old release to vault.centos.org", which promptly
  broke the 32-bit libstdc++ RPM download. Corrected the URLs appropriately
  (try mirror.centos.org version first, then fallback to vault.centos.org
  version).
• Version 7.11 (23rd February 2015):
  It turns out that the soft-link I added to the chrome-deps-* RPM became a
  "Requires:", so I resolved this by also making it a "Provides:". Thanks to
  Raymond Page for spotting this issue.
• Version 7.10 (6th February 2015):
  No longer need to LD_PRELOAD the unset_var.so library (one of the major
  causes of orphaned kitten deaths apparently) because the more recent
  libstdc++ works with sub-processes fired off from Google Chrome without
  unset_var.so being used. An old "missing" function
  (gnome_keyring_attribute_list_new) came back to bite us after the removal
  of the patched libgnome-keyring.so.0, so created a new copy of that
  with the function version rather than CentOS 6's macro version. Needed
  some convoluted code involving two compilations and a new soft-link
  in the chrome-deps-* RPM (you really don't want to know!). Added gnome-keyring
  as a dependency just in case the system library isn't installed.
• Version 7.00 (2nd February 2015):
  Discovered that only a more recent libstdc++ is now needed (either from a
  64-bit gcc build or the CentOS 7 libstdc++ 32-bit RPM), but only if the
  user is at version 6.6 of the OS or later. Raised the minimum OS version
  to 6.6 because of that and cleaned up any old libraries lying around
  (including removing Fedora 15's libc and banishing any potential GHOST
  vulnerability).
  Now use %_topdir for the RPM build dir (thanks to Bob Hepple for this).
  Removed a lot of library-modifying code, so this release is unusually
  slightly smaller than the previous one.
• Version 6.10 (29th August 2014):
  Google Chrome 37 introduced a very kludgy redirect of stdout/stderr so
  that it ended up running 2 copies of cat for the duration of the session,
  both of which crashed due to LD_LIBRARY_PATH issues with the previous 6.00
  release. Redirected stdout/stderr to /dev/null instead. Added
  "Obsoletes: chrome-deps" to the RPM spec file for anyone still having the
  old chrome-deps RPM around.
• Version 6.00 (27th July 2014):
  After many years installing into the same /opt/google/chrome tree for all
  3 RPM releases (stable, beta, unstable), Google suddenly decided to split
  the install trees. This meant a fair amount of new code was needed to
  deal with this, although the dumb inclusion of the /usr/bin/google-chrome
  soft-link in 3 RPM manifests means that the whole purpose of the split
  (to allow all 3 RPM releases to be simultaneously installed) is ruined.
  Added PackageKit as a new dependency (some live CentOS DVDs don't install
  this package, but the Google Chrome RPM needs it). Fixed a bad grep
  during the beta/unstable RPM install by creating a soft-link for
  google-chrome.desktop. chrome-deps RPM has been renamed to
  chrome-deps-(stable|beta|unstable) and any old-named chrome-deps RPM
  will be removed. Removed the no longer needed CentOS 7 repo code.
  Re-wrote the wrapper to handle all 3 RPM types because Google have
  dubiously left the defaults for all 3 in the same /etc/default/google-chrome
  file.
• Version 5.02 (10th July 2014):
  CentOS 7 final is out, so I removed the pre-release repo code and the
  .repo file it created if it's present. Google Chrome will fail in any
  pre-6.5 OS release, so refuse to continue if the user won't upgrade to 6.5
  or later. Changed equivalent RHEL and CentOS references to be RHEL/CentOS.
• Version 5.01 (26th June 2014):
  The latest pre-release CentOS 7 live ISO creates placeholder .repo files
  which messed up the repo-creating code I'd put in 5.00. This has been
  corrected by checking that the .repo files have at least one
  non-blank/non-comment line in them (they don't at the moment!).
• Version 5.00 (21st June 2014):
  Added initial 64-bit RHEL/CentOS 7
  (pre-release) support that's been tested in a VM. This involved
  possibly creating an updates repo file if no repos are found and not building
  the chrome-deps RPM on RHEL/CentOS 7 of course. Upped the
  minimum RHEL/CentOS 6 release supported by the script to version 6.5. Tidied up
  some of the final messages output by the script.
• Version 4.70 (17th May 2014):
  Finally fix the 2-hourly segfault that was appearing in syslog. It was a
  self-call to the google-chrome bash script which was fixed by unsetting
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH before the self-call. Steve Cleveland suggested a
  non-interactive mode to allow the script to be cron'ed, so I added a -f
  flag (specify up to 3 times depending on what prompting you want eliminated)
  to provide this.
• Version 4.60 (12th April 2014):
  Latest Google Chrome prompted me for a keyring password, which I eventually
  realised was because of an undefined gnome_keyring_attribute_list_new symbol.
  Turns out this first appeared in an F17 library, so I've had to download
  F17's libgnome-keyring RPM and extract libgnome-keyring.so.0 from it.
  I had no idea people managed to get a RHEL/CentOS 6 install with no nss package
  (must be some sort of minimal install I guess), so that's been added. Thanks
  to Ravi Saive at tecmint.com for suggesting this, though no-one actually
  told me the issue directly :-( Check the size and cksum of a downloaded Fedora
  RPM after the download as well as before (duh!).
• Version 4.50 (11th December 2013):
  If Google Chrome execs a helper app and that app then execs another sub-process,
  then LD_PRELOAD would mess up that second sub-process. This has been fixed
  by saving, unsetting and restoring LD_PRELOAD around the point where the
  helper app is exec'ed (an example would be file-roller viewing .tar.gz downloads).
  Previously downloaded F15 RPMs are now checksummed and size-checked on subsequent
  script runs. If they don't match, they are deleted and re-downloaded.
  This is a special non-raw-orphan-kitten-eating release just for a certain
  CentOS mailing list member :-)
• Version 4.41 (9th December 2013):
  A user reported that glibc-devel wasn't present (causing the gcc compilation
  to fail), so I've added this in as a dependency. Removed the SELinux warning
  at the end of the script because enforcing mode seems to not upset nacl_helper
  in recent Google Chrome releases. Fedora 15 RPMs have moved to the archive
  site, so adjusted the code to only download from the archive site. Primary
  testing is now with CentOS 6.5 and Scientific Linux 6.4.
• Version 4.40 (5th October 2013):
  The same user who reported the 4.30 issue found another missing symbol,
  this time in the Fedora 15 libgtk-x11-2.0 library. The symbol is defined in the
  Fedora 15 libgdk_pixbuf-2.0 library, so that is now extracted from the
  additionally downloaded Fedora 15 gdk-pixbuf2 RPM. The chrome-deps RPM is
  therefore now at version 1.03.
• Version 4.30 (4th October 2013):
  A user reported a missing symbol that was tracked down to the Fedora 15
  libgio-2.0 library. That library and its libgobject-2.0 dependency are now
  additionally extracted and included in the chrome-deps RPM (which was bumped
  to version 1.02).
• Version 4.20 (22nd August 2013):
  If possible, use "yum check-update google-chrome-stable" ahead of the OmahaProxy CSV
  site to look for updates. Any newer version can be installed rather than insisting
  on the exact OmahaProxy version (after a full day being out-of-date after the
  Google Chrome 29 launch, we can't trust it not to happen on each new release).
  Used some extra params to the OmahaProxy request to narrow the data down more
  precisely. Google Chrome 29 doesn't wrongly output dbus messages like version 28
  did, so the terminal warning was removed.
• Version 4.10 (8th August 2013):
  Fixed Google Talk (Hangouts) plugin crash by unsetting LD_LIBRARY_PATH when
  it's run (yes, for some reason, the plugin is built with an older toolchain
  than Google Chrome itself). Some users are reporting i686 is used in their
  RPM build path instead of i386 - I couldn't reproduce this, but I've added
  code to work around this anyway. modify_wrapper no longer outputs anything
  to stdout if it successfully updates /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome.
• Version 4.01 (30th July 2013):
  Emergency 2-char bug fix because I found a 4th build environment that triggered
  an rpmbuild bug (parses % directives on a commented line in a spec file).
  Removed the two percent chars on a comment line and it works again. No idea
  why my normal three build environments didn't show this problem (one of them
  is literally a VM image of a clean desktop right after a CentOS 6 install).
• Version 4.00 (30th July 2013):
  New chrome-deps RPM is built that includes 7 Fedora libraries (libdl.so.2 added
  for this release), unset_vars.so (updated slightly) and a modify_wrapper script
  that is run post-install to add code to /etc/default/google-chrome to modify
  google-chrome if its LD_PRELOAD addition isn't present. modify_wrapper will
  also enable the Google Chrome repo. Download/installation of
  google-chrome-stable/chrome-deps dependencies is now prompted for.
  Don't remove /etc/cron.daily/google-chrome or /etc/yum.conf.d/google-chrome.repo
  any more. Added -t (temp dir parent location) option and also -s (stable),
  -b (beta) and -U (unstable) options to switch release channels.
• Version 3.20 (27th July 2013):
  Compile and install LD_PRELOAD functions that wrap around exec*() routines,
  bringing in gcc as a new dependency. The functions save/blank LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
  call the original routines and, if they return, restore LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
  This is an initial effort to stop helper apps/plugins from crashing when
  run from within Google Chrome.
• Version 3.11 (25th July 2013):
  If SELinux is enabled, set appropriate SELinux contexts on Fedora libraries
  in /opt/google/chrome/lib and that directory itself. If SELinux is enabled
  and in enforcing mode, display a warning that permissive mode (with a reboot)
  is required to get nacl_helper to run correctly.
• Version 3.10 (24th July 2013):
  Use .so.0 extension (instead of .so.3 in earlier releases) for renamed Fedora
  ld-linux library. Also changed references to ld-linux*.so.0 in ld-linux, libc
  and libstdc++ Fedora libraries. Thanks to Marcus Sundberg for this suggestion.
  Dependency list for Google Chrome RPM is now redhat-lsb, wget, xdg-utils
  GConf2, libXScrnSaver and libX11 (1.5+). Hangs/errors occurred
  with a CentOS 6.0 VM I ran Google Chrome under, but 6.4 is fine, so that's now
  the minimum OS version requirement (script offers to upgrade 6.0-6.3 to the
  latest release - if declined, the script aborts).
• Version 3.00 (21st July 2013):
  Added command line options at long last. -d will remove /tmp/chrome_install at the end of
  the script. -h shows syntax help. -n displays a dry run of what it would do without
  actually doing anything. -q reduces the output messages to the minimum needed and -q -q
  silences the output completely apart from fatal errors. -u uninstalls the Fedora libraries
  and the Google Chrome RPM. Abort script if it detects Google Chrome is running.
  Display disk/file usage (only if files are present) for /opt/google/chrome and
  /tmp/chrome_install at the start and end of the script. If it's defined, use $TMPDIR
  instead of /tmp. Install Fedora libraries before the Google Chrome RPM (was the other
  way around). Don't download Fedora RPMs and/or unpack them if the Fedora libraries are
  already installed in /opt/google/chrome/lib - this speeds up second and later runs
  (e.g. for Google Chrome upgrades) significantly.
• Version 2.10 (20th July 2013):
  Can detect if Fedora 15 RPMs have been moved to the archive site and will
  download from there instead if they have. Fixed incorrect check for lsb
  dependency. Remove a cron file and repo file installed by the Google Chrome RPM.
  Simplistic check that OS is an RHEL/CentOS 6 derivative. Early exits now run
  clean up routine. Downloads all go through one function that will restore any
  pre-existing file if the download fails.
• Version 2.00 (14th July 2013):
  32-bit support added thanks to prodding from Seva Epsteyn. Version check
  both installed and downloaded Google Chrome against the OmahaProxy CSV list
  and only download/install if out-of-date. Use updated Fedora 15 RPMs rather
  than the original ISO versions. Warn if an enabled Google Chrome repo is
  present. General code tidy ups and more/readable messages are output now too.
• Version 1.10 (13th July 2013):
  Added auto-update check because the number of versions today is getting
  somewhat crazy. Also fixed an incorrect skip of force-installing a downloaded
  Chrome RPM (if any previous Chrome RPM had been installed, it would have
  never installed a new one!).
• Version 1.02 (13th July 2013):
  Added --no-check-certificate to wget command (my testing didn't need it, but
  someone reported that their wget did need it). Also yum install wget if it's
  not on the system.
• Version 1.01 (13th July 2013):
  Fixed the bad variable that plagued version 1.00.
• Version 1.00 (13th July 2013):
  Downloads latest Chrome and some Fedora 15 RPMs, installs lsb and
  some extracted libraries from the F15 RPMs. Had a last-minute bad variable
  added that broke the Chrome download completely. :-(

The TODO list

• The first-time install and run of Google Chrome on a non-KDE system produces
  some xdg-mime errors. This is a bug in the xdg-utils package that I've
  reported
  to Red Hat, so you'll have to wait for them to fix it.
• It would be nice to prevent the beige support banner appearing every time
  you start up Google Chrome on CentOS 6. Replacing glibc/libpthread with a newer
  release didn't seem to work, so any clues to help with this would be most
  welcome.

The compatibility note

Please note that RHEL/CentOS 6 and 7
references on this page should hopefully equally cover all RHEL/CentOS 6 and 7
derivatives. I have now moved to CentOS 7 on bare metal, but do CentOS 6
testing in a 64-bit VM.
Someone's bound to ask: no, the script won't work with RHEL/CentOS 5 or earlier.

The feedback

Any bugs, fixes, improvements or suggestions should be fed back to me,
Richard K. Lloyd, at [e-mail]
but please note there is no warranty on this product whatsoever and the script
itself is in the public domain.
Bemusingly, one ultimate feedback was a tutorial
video
someone uploaded to YouTube!

The defence (no, it doesn't eat raw orphaned kittens)

Apparently one of the guys on the CentOS
mailing list
really doesn't like my script, claiming that it "consumes raw orphaned kittens"
and "should be classified as a criminal offense". Here's my response:

• I'm now using libstdc++ built from the latest gcc source,
  so the issue of using potentially vulnerable old libraries has now been
  resolved.
• There is no LD_PRELOAD library code any more either, not that there was
  anything wrong with that code in the first place anyway!
• To produce a single script that does everything (including root-only RPM
  installs) obviously requires root access. Yes, in theory, you could skip
  root-requiring actions if you're not root, but these are so intermingled in
  the code flow (e.g. you need to install some prerequisite RPMs and even upgrade
  your OS if it's pre-6.6 before you even get to build the chrome-deps RPM),
  that it would be extremely clumsy to try to split root vs. non-root actions.
• The script doesn't consume raw orphaned kittens - more like raw orphaned
  Google build systems!

The ChromeDriver server (Web app developers only)

If you're a Web app developer and have just installed Google Chrome via my
script, you may also be trying to run the ChromeDriver
server on RHEL/CentOS 6
to automate the testing of your app. Sadly, after
downloading
and unpacking it (and making sure you got the latest 32-bit or 64-bit version),
you'll find it has a familiar library problem very similar to Google Chrome's.
However, this is easily fixed by simply using the extra libraries from
your Google Chrome installation:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/google/chrome/lib
./chromedriver
[Should output: Starting ChromeDriver (v2.9.248304) on port 9515]

The non-solution at Red Hat's Customer Portal

I was bemused to find this on the Red Hat Customer Portal. Basically, it says "Google Chrome doesn't install in RHEL 6", gives a bunch of failed yum install outputs and, er, that's it. Even funnier is that it has a capitalised green "SOLUTION VERIFIED" statement just below the heading :-) Maybe they need to link to this page...

The Chromecast

If you have a Chromecast, you can install the Google Cast extension in Google Chrome by going to the Extensions section of the Chrome Web store and searching for "Google Cast". You can then cast a tab from your RHEL/CentOS Google Chrome, though it can be laggy. More info (from a UK/Linux/Android perspective) about Chromecast can be found on my sister site.

Here is the url:  http://chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk/

Google Chrome was installed successfully.
Please run the browser via the 'google-chrome' command as a non-root user.

To update Google Chrome, run "yum update google-chrome-stable" or
simply re-run this script with "./install_chrome.sh".

To uninstall Google Chrome,
run "yum remove google-chrome-stable " or "./install_chrome.sh -u".