Cannot launch Chromium/Electron-based programs on Ubuntu

Help
1

I have a weird problem on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

$ nix-shell -p chromium --run chromium
/tmp/nix-shell-1829645-0/rc: line 1: 1829664 Trace/breakpoint trap   chromium
Backtrace 
Thread 1 (Thread 0x7ffff5a7cd40 (LWP 1829993)):
#0  0x00005555583b33e5 in base::internal::PartitionAddressSpace::Init() ()
No symbol table info available.
#1  0x00005555583b2f32 in base::PartitionRoot<true>::Init(base::PartitionOptions) ()
No symbol table info available.
#2  0x000055555774efb0 in base::internal::PartitionMalloc(base::allocator::AllocatorDispatch const*, unsigned long, void*) [clone .cfi] ()
No symbol table info available.
#3  0x000055555bb214a0 in malloc.cfi ()
No symbol table info available.
#4  0x00007ffff6e0fcf0 in set_binding_values.part () from /nix/store/73k2knwhv4zzizsjr1g1dqjvzkamx8bd-glibc-2.33-49/lib/libc.so.6
No symbol table info available.
#5  0x00007ffff6e0ff91 in bindtextdomain () from /nix/store/73k2knwhv4zzizsjr1g1dqjvzkamx8bd-glibc-2.33-49/lib/libc.so.6
No symbol table info available.
#6  0x00007ffff5abbbc7 in _gpg_err_init () from /nix/store/5p42ddhrpm6y8x0lcj5v546r560xav4g-libgpg-error-1.42/lib/libgpg-error.so.0
No symbol table info available.
#7  0x00007ffff7fdbbce in call_init () from /nix/store/73k2knwhv4zzizsjr1g1dqjvzkamx8bd-glibc-2.33-49/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
No symbol table info available.
#8  0x00007ffff7fdbcb4 in _dl_init () from /nix/store/73k2knwhv4zzizsjr1g1dqjvzkamx8bd-glibc-2.33-49/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
No symbol table info available.
#9  0x00007ffff7fcd08a in _dl_start_user () from /nix/store/73k2knwhv4zzizsjr1g1dqjvzkamx8bd-glibc-2.33-49/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
No symbol table info available.
#10 0x0000000000000001 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#11 0x00007fffffffc837 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#12 0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.

The gdb backtrace indicates a crash in base::internal::PartitionAddressSpace::Init(). Search engines only bring up the Chromium source code for this query.

This problem also extends to all other Chromium/Electron-based applications such as Slack.

2

Doesn’t seem to be specific to Nix: Comment #6 : Bug #1943568 : Bugs : slack package : Ubuntu

That said, there is an issue affecting all Electron apps currently.

3

This turned out to be a memory problem. The virtual memory address space of that machine was constrained by ulimit and Chromium/Electron’s allocator did not like this at all. Setting the limit back to ulimit -v unlimited resolved the issue.