How to enable Google’s PDF Plugin in Chromium
Google’s PDF Plugin is most excellent for most needs – and for anything else you can actually download the PDF and do whatever you want to do with it (sidenote though: printing would be really nice. Pretty please, Google?). Unfortunately, it only ships with the official Chrome version and is therefore not available in the Chromium editions most distributions ship or make available.
Therefore, to get and enable the plugin on your favorite local Chromium version:
- Download a Google Chrome release that matches your processor architecture (x86/x86_64):
# wget http://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb
# wget http://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-unstable_current_amd64.deb - extract the .deb:
# ar vx <previously downloaded .deb> - extract the data payload:
# tar --lzma -xvf data.tar.lzma - copy the plugin to destination folder:
(note:/usr/lib/chromium-browseris valid for my Ubuntu PPA version, might be/opt/chromium-browseror something on other distributions)
# sudo cp opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/ - restart any open Chromium processes
- check about:plugins for the
Chrome PDF Viewer, should not need any enabling - Profit!
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hey, everyone is getting error with this method .. any clue ?
What is the error, exactly?
The error is “Missing Plug-In”
I am wondering if the plug-in requires a backend that may not be installed on our machines.
Also, it seems more people are hitting this content from: http://chromestory.com/2010/11/how-to-enable-chromes-inbuilt-pdf-plugin-in-chromium-ubuntu/ than from your blog, which seems to be the source. Too bad.
For me the method worked pretty much everytime I tried it. Granted, AFAICR those were only pretty recent Ubuntu or Fedora machines. Does the plugin show up for you in
about:plugins?oh, nvm… overread the first sentence. Tho, it is enabled in
about:plugins? It should be self-hosted.It is enabled in about:plugins.
Ultimately, I installed Chrome proper.
What version of Chromium are you running? And what version of Chrome were you pulling from?
Chromium: 8.0.552.215
Chrome: 9.0.597.0
It’s seriously weird, but at least it works for you now.
I was pulling from the same channels; in both regards dev for me, no clue about the ‘real’ version numbers. Nowadays I prefer the beta channel, though. The dev had too many issues in webkit rendering lately. Or so it seemed.
It works for me, thanks!
Using:
debian linux 2.6.38-2-amd64 – wheezy/sid
google-chrome-unstable (14.0.794.0-r89286)
chromium (12.0.742.91~r87961-1)
Paths:
src: /opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so
dst: /usr/lib/chromium/
Nice. 🙂
wow!
I seem to have found the solution!
I tried to do as is written here – but got a “missing plugin”.
I installed google-chrome-stable 13.0.782.112-r95650
from http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppas/8
and run
sudo cp /opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so /opt/lib/chromium-browser/
profit…
Missing Plug-In error
12.0.742.112 (90304) Ubuntu 11.04
Away to try using Chrome 13…
…Now got Google Chrome installed 13.0.782.220 (had been using Chromium).
/opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so for Google Chrome
/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libpdf.so for Chromium
Now I can open pdf files fine in a new tab.
So for me libpdf.so method did not work in Chromium 13 but did for Google Chrome.
Actually… Chrome (the official google distribution) always ships with the plugin installed,
Thank you so much!
It worked nicely on Chromium 12.0.742.112 (90304) Ubuntu 11.04.
Great work.
Blessings,
André
Actually… Didn’t work. =/
I was excited with the plugin there in about:plugins… but it didn’t run pdf files.
Hmm… weird. Maybe some 32bit/64bit mismatch?
Gordon,
same problem “Missing Plugin” 😦
I am using chromium 12.0.742.112 (90304) Ubuntu 11.04.
and
file chromium-browser libpdf.so
chromium-browser: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, stripped
libpdf.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped
Any suggestions ?
Interesting… I just checked on a clean Ubuntu 10.10 RC x86 (32bit) install. Didn’t have a 64bit .iso here, but actually shouldn’t make a difference. It just … worked. My steps:
# sudo apt-add-repository ppa:chromium-daily/stable
# sudo aptitude install chromium-browser chromium-browser-inspector chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
[download Google Chrome stable]
# cd ~/Downloads/
# ar vx google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
# tar --lzma -xvf data.tar.lzma
# sudo cp opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/
# chromium-browser
Checked on some PDFs, all displayed flawlessly using the integrated plugin.
Only thing I can think of right now – since Chrome/Chromium 14 are stable right now, is it possible you are trying to plug the 14.x plugin into the 12.0.742.112 Chromium version or are you absolutely sure you have the plugin from the 12.x branch available? The downloads from Google all point to the 14.x branch right now.
thanks for this.
Just got this to work on a current ubuntu 11.10 build with Chromium 15.x – needed to download the stable chrome version. Also, there’s a plugins folder in the chromium-browser folder. For good measure I put the pdf plugin both there and in the parent folder.
For people having trouble with the Missing Plug-In error, as suggested by adamsmith you need the stable version of chrome. Replace the wget command by:
wget “http://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb”
(with i386 replaced by your processor architecture)
I did everything as you writen but now I can’t log in my profile in ubuntu.
What do you mean by ‘profile’? Your user account?
Thanks very much, it worked for me,
OS : Ubuntu 10.04
Chromium : 18.0.1025.151
Chrome : Google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
😉
Thanks so much for this! works perfect.
OS: Ubuntu 12.04 64bit
Chromium: 18.0.1025.168
Chrome: 21.0.1180.75
The unstable version of chrome gave me a “aw, snap” crash, works with the stable chrome.
Thanks very much, worked great.
The links in the post 404 for me but change the protocol to HTTPS and they work fine.
Stable channel links:
https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb