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Troubleshooting a Zero W v1.1 (c. 2017) Kiosk issue (self.raspberrypi)

submitted 7 months ago by Blankmann to c/[email protected]

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In December 2017 I set up a Raspberry Pi Zero W (v1.1) with a bash script to automatically launch Chromium browser at startup in kiosk mode, wait 2 minutes, then use xdotool to change tabs.

Browser was configured to launch with 2 tabs. One was a locally hosted (static) HTML file, the other was a Google Slides slideshow. HTML file displayed a welcome message and current time (via css clock) while the slideshow loaded in the background tab.

This was working flawlessly for years.

Here's my problem
If the display was showing desktop background instead of clock/slideshow I would just SSH in and reboot to fix it ... but over the last 6 months, this "reboot fix" reliability of launching the Chromium browser has fallen off a cliff... From 100% to 50% to 10% then basically 0%

I suspected the latest version of the browser is not supported on this old Zero W ... So I formatted the SD card, burned the 32-bit Legacy version of Pi OS (bullseye) for the Zero W using imager and confirmed my suspicions.

I almost fixed the issue by launching Midori in Fullscreen mode instead, but it's displaying the navbar for some reason. Am I missing something?

For this simple use case, would I be better off running 32-bit Pi OS Lite and an X11 window manager? How?

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[–] zetwinkie 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Have you considered upgrading your setup to a Pi Zero 2 W? It’s 64-bit compatible and wouldn’t rewrite the process you’ve already setup while overcoming the lack of supported 32-bit Chromium.

[–] Blankmann 1 points 7 months ago

Sure, but if I can get this one working I wouldn't need to :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried just downgrading the version of chromium? https://askubuntu.com/questions/138284/how-to-downgrade-a-package-via-apt-get

[–] Blankmann 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the link! I've never seen the apt-mark hold option before.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Ive never had to use it myself 🤞 hope it helps!