chromium error: Error initializing NSS without a persistent database: NSS error code: -8023

Yuwen Dai

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Oct 29, 2016, 9:10:03 AM10/29/16

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Dear all,

I'm using Wheezy and chromium. Chromium has been worked well until today. When I run

chromium

from the shell, i saw this message:

[31:31:1029/204029:ERROR:nss_util.cc(211)] Error initializing NSS without a persistent database: NSS error code: -8023

and chromium cann't open any page. The version of chromium is:
chromium --version
Chromium 37.0.2062.120 Built on Debian 7.6, running on Debian 7.11

I also searched internet, some people suggested

ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nss/ /usr/lib/nss

I tried, it didn't work. Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.

Yuwen

Eric De Mund

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Nov 6, 2016, 8:30:04 AM11/6/16

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Yuwen,

] I'm using Wheezy and chromium. Chromium has been working well until
] today. When I ran chromium from the shell, I saw this message:

]
] [31:31:1029/204029:ERROR:nss_util.cc(211)] Error initializing NSS \
] without a persistent database: NSS error code: -8023
]

] and chromium can't open any page.

Executive summary:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| In /etc/chromium/default, set |
| EXTRALIB=/usr/lib/xulrunner-24.0:/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Long explanation:

I believe I've solved the problem. Chromium can't seem to find
libnss3.so.

>From three things: (1) my doing an "apt-file search libnss3", (2) the
notes on this web page:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=129904&p=625402
[Solved] How to install Old Chromium?

, and (3) my finding no libnss3.so under /usr/lib/chromium, I sus-
pected that chromium's LD_LIBRARY_PATH was broken. I made this change
to /etc/chromium/default, and it seems to solve the problem. My chromium
browser now successfully launches.

------------------------------
/etc/chromium% diff -u default.orig default
--- default.orig 2013-08-02 08:06:13.000000000 -0700
+++ default 2016-11-06 04:17:36.000000000 -0800
@@ -3,3 +3,6 @@

# Options to pass to chromium
CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--password-store=detect"
+EXTRALIB=/usr/lib/xulrunner-24.0:/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1
+
+# end
/etc/chromium%

------------------------------
******************************

Interestingly, my system, being of this version:

% chromium --version

Chromium 37.0.2062.120 Built on Debian 7.6, running on Debian 7.11

% uname -a
Linux myhost 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.82-1 x86_64 GNU/Linux
% lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 7.11 (wheezy)
Release: 7.11
Codename: wheezy
%

has four libnss3.so's:

1 root root 982512 Oct 16 07:09 /usr/lib/icedove/libnss3.so
1 root root 974064 Apr 26 2016 /usr/lib/iceweasel/libnss3.so
1 root root 1316728 Oct 20 13:32 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss3.so
1 root root 973984 Oct 25 2014 /usr/lib/xulrunner-24.0/libnss3.so

Setting EXTRALIB in /etc/chromium/default to each of these four
values in turn yields these results:

SUCCESS EXTRALIB=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1
SUCCESS EXTRALIB=/usr/lib/iceweasel:/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1
FAIL EXTRALIB=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1
SUCCESS EXTRALIB=/usr/lib/xulrunner-24.0:/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1

(Where does that /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1 come from? It wasn't
originally in the file /etc/chromium/default. But it *is* in
/usr/bin/chromium like so:
EXTRALIB=/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1
[Even though my system has no /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1 directory!]
So I superstitiously included it along with the good directory in
/etc/chromium/default. However, it's not necessary; the four tests
above turned out exactly the same with no mention of it, i.e. with
only the first directory e.g. /usr/lib/xulrunner-24.0 specified.)

Regards,
Eric
--
fortune cookie
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| "While you recently had your problems on the run, |
| they've regrouped and are making another attack." |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

Eric De Mund | Yahoo: ead0002
e...@ixian.com | GTalk: ead....@gmail.com

Alexis Grigoriou

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Nov 17, 2016, 12:30:04 PM11/17/16

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I get the exact same error. It happened after an apt-get upgrade.
Searching the net I too did not find anything helpful.

Jasper Noë

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Nov 18, 2016, 3:00:05 PM11/18/16

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There was some discussion here:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts/2016/11/msg00011.html

I managed to get chromium on wheezy working again by forcing libnss3 to
an earlier version, using synaptic.

--Jasper