Upload issues with all Chromium-based browsers

English Applications
1

I noticed this first in Brave-browser. On most websites, uploading files (I mostly tried PDFs) doesn’t work: both for drag-and-drop and browsing files either nothing happens or the tab crashes, depending on the website. I tried several: cloud services, email services, my work plateform… Then I tried with Chromium and got the exact same result. Finally I tried Firefox, and there it worked normally. I deduced it was a problem with Chromium-based browsers. The behavior persisted after reinstall and update to newer version of the browsers (and system upgrade too).

Does this make sense to anyone?

2

It makes sense. Whether it is a browser problem or a problem with your system, I cannot tell.

I always use “firefox” for uploads. I sometimes download with other browsers, but I don’t recall having tried an upload.

3

I exclusively use Chrome and Brave, and have for quite a long time.
Absolutely NO issues with anything, including Uploading of files (of all file types), and Downloading of files.

Worth a try … create a new user account (that’s never been used) on the system. Log out of your main user account, then log in using the new user account. Fire up Chrome or Brave or Chromium … starting any of those should present a Welcome screen, as if you’ve never used the browser.

Attempt an Upload … still see the issue??

4

It works. I know more now: it is very likely a problem with Chromium-based browsers — and virtual memory. I tried installing Opera (which is also Chromium-based) and got an “Out of memory” error instead of “Snap! …”. So the fact that new Opera crashes in spite of having no extensions, cache, config or anything, and the fact that Brave doesn’t show the same issue for a new user, makes me think it’s a problem of RAM or swap.

I have about 40GiB of swap, and 32 of RAM. I’m also facing issues with hibernation, and I would not be surprised to learn there’s a link between those issues and my upload problem. What do you think?

5

After some more testing, it seems that the only type of files that fails everytime is: anything but images.
→ I can upload SVG, PNG… of different size, it always works;
→ however PDFs, LibreOffice files… summon the error.
I could check that the size isn’t the problem: I just uploaded a 150kiB image but I failed to upload a 48kiB .ods spreadsheet file…
I feel like this is all getting weirder and weirder… I need help, please!