Arch Linux

I've figure out a weird way to solve this problem:
I install debian 10 + gnome + google chrome in a lxc container, and the live caption works... But I still think it should works in a native archlinux environment.

If you run chromium from a terminal, the live captioning code actually provides some useful logging. In particular there seems to be a permission problem:

W1016 14:01:51.121939 306447 language_pack_utils.cc:137] Error reading from /home/sandsmark/.config/chromium/SODALanguagePacks/en-US/1.0.2/SODAModels/configs: error 'Operation not permitted' while opening directory '/home/sandsmark/.config/chromium/SODALanguagePacks/en-US/1.0.2/SODAModels/configs': Operation not permitted


The files have -rw------- perms (owned by the user).

I'm not sure if it is some sandboxing config that's different in arch, or if the models are supposed to be shipped in the package, but it seems solvable.


edit: Changing the permissions so that the dir and contents are readable by other users doesn't help, but if you turn off the sandbox (run chromium with --no-sandbox) it manages to load and initialize. It unfortunately even then doesn't render anything, it seems to be continuously resetting the session (or it could be a red herring and it is supposed to loop like that).

Attached log excerpts with and without sandboxing.


edit2: Looking at the code, it seems like it tries to load some standalone library pre-sandbox (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/main/components/soda/constants.cc#27 + https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/main/content/utility/speech/speech_recognition_sandbox_hook_linux.cc#53). Assuming it is instead built-in, I guess the problem is that the library initialization is not run pre-sandbox and therefore isn't able to run what it wants. Alternatively the problem is that libsoda.so is required, and it is supposed to be gotten from somewhere.

Aaand a new comment, because I guess this is the final issue: It seems like it might require a separate API key: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/90a2ac585e61be98d3dd3dd47f5566110df63700

libsoda.so is not open source nor part of chromium, so SODA/1.0.9/SODAFiles/libsoda.so is downloaded on demand and seems to have some DRM (e. g. the API key).

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