Check out this project on my Github over here 🙂

Fully automated patching for Chrome Remote Desktop on Ubuntu Budgie.

Chrome remote desktop is fantastic, but often clashes with Xorg nuances from a variety of desktop environments in Ubuntu. This chrome-remote-desktop script extends and replaces the version automatically installed by Google in /opt/google/chrome-remote-desktop/chrome-remote-desktop. This stuff is only relevant for accessing your Ubuntu machine from elsewhere (e.g. the "server", the client machine should not be installing anything, all it needs is a web browser).

Set up the server:

Before patching anything or pursuing other forms of delightful tomfoolery, follow the installation instructions provided by Google. Set up everything normally- install Google’s .deb download with dpkg, set up a PIN, etc.
The trouble comes when you are trying to remote in- some problems you may encounter include:

  • none of the X sessions work, each immediately closing the connection to the client
  • the remote desktop environment crashes or becomes mangled
  • odd scaling issues or flaky resolution changes

Patch it up:

# get this script:
# wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Jesssullivan/chrome-remote-desktop-budgie/master/chrome-remote-desktop

# or:
git clone https://github.com/Jesssullivan/chrome-remote-desktop-budgie/ 
cd chrome-remote-desktop-budgie 

# behold:
python3 chrome-remote-desktop

# ...perhaps, if you are keen (optional):
sudo chmod u+x addsystemd.sh
sudo ./addsystemd.sh

What does this do?

We are primarily just enforcing the use of existing instances of X and correct display values as reported by your system.

  • This version keeps a persistent version itself in /usr/local/bin/ in addition updating the one executed by Chrome in /opt/google/chrome-remote-desktop/.
  • A mirror of this script is also maintained at /usr/local/bin/chrome-remote-desktop.github, and will let the user know if there are updates.
  • The version distributed by google is retained in /opt/ too as chrome-remote-desktop.verbatim.
  • Each of these versions are compared by md5 hash- this way our patched version of chrome-remote-desktop will always make sure it is where it should be, even after Google pushes updates and overwrites everything in /opt/.