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How can I install Chrome on Linux without needing to log in as root?

Note that I want to use Chrome, not Chromium.

If I go to the official download page, I get the choice between:

Please select your download package:
32 bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu)
64 bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu)
32 bit .rpm (For Fedora/openSUSE)
64 bit .rpm (For Fedora/openSUSE)

Can I somehow extract and install Chrome from the .deb or the .rpm without needing to be root? Or is there another link that I missed?

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    This is about the only thing I love about Windows: I can install Google Chrome at school.
    – user5130
    Mar 9, 2011 at 13:29
  • @Raked S: well on Windows using the "portable xxx" you can install basically any app without being admin... Here I could use Chromium but I don't get it: I'm pretty sure there were .tar.gz for previous versions of Chrome.
    – SyntaxT3rr0r
    Mar 9, 2011 at 13:45

1 Answer 1

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I've successfully extracted the Fedora/OpenSUSE RPM into my home directory and ran chrome from there. You simply need to make sure that the symlinks for the libraries are all there. This assumes that the libraries area already installed, and $HOME/bin is in my $PATH.

I just ran:

mkdir ~/chrome; cd ~/chrome
rpm2cpio ~/Download/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm | cpio -id
cd opt/google/chrome
ln -s /usr/lib64/libnss3.so libnss3.so.1d
ln -s /usr/lib64/libnssutil3.so libnssutil3.so.1d
ln -s /usr/lib64/libsmime3.so libsmime3.so.1d
ln -s /lib64/libplc4.so libplc4.so.0d
ln -s /lib64/libnspr4.so libnspr4.so.0d
ln -s /lib64/libbz2.so.1.0.6 libbz2.so.1.0
ln -s ~/chrome/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome ~/bin/google-chrome

Now, if you don't have all those libraries installed already, or there are other dependencies for the chrome binary that are unmet, you might need to build and install them in your homedir. Google Chrome helpfully adds ~/chrome/opt/google/chrome/lib to the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so you could install those additional dependencies there.

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  • @jsbillings: just a question: you did it because you had no root access or just to help me?
    – SyntaxT3rr0r
    Mar 9, 2011 at 14:20
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    @SyntaxT3rr0r: I've been trying to get Chrome to work on the RHEL5 systems in my office for a while, so I've gone through similar steps like this before. Sadly, RHEL5 has more problems than the above, since Chrome uses the API of newer versions of glib, gtk, pango, cairo, etc. Hopefully you're not stuck with such an ordeal.
    – jsbillings
    Mar 9, 2011 at 14:24
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    @jsbillings: no actually it's to install on my own workstation, which I've got root access for. Simply I don't like to install "commercial" apps using the root account (I actually don't like the fact that you need to be root to install .rpm or .deb, my biggest gripe with Linux since 10+ years). Most of the apps here that do not come from official Debian repos I install them in the user account, without su'ing to root.
    – SyntaxT3rr0r
    Mar 9, 2011 at 14:31
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    @SyntaxT3rr0r: I agree. The google chrome RPM is even more insidious, creating a cron job that perpetually installs a yum repository for google chrome, which could conceivably be used to track users and potentially release other unwanted software on a system if you're not paying close attention to where updates come from.
    – jsbillings
    Mar 9, 2011 at 14:52
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    @user10508: You can override the path in your environment via export CHROME_DEVEL_SANDBOX=/path/to/chrome-sandbox. I found I had to run chrome with the --no-sandbox option in order to function without a setuid root chrome-sandbox binary.
    – loopforever
    May 25, 2012 at 20:40

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