Looker uses the Chromium renderer to run certain Looker features. If your instance is hosted by Looker, this software is already installed. However, if you host your own Looker instance, you will need to install the renderer.

For Looker 5.22 through 6.2, you will need to install the renderer before enabling the Enhanced Rendering Labs feature, which, in conjunction with the renderer, allows you to enjoy certain Looker features.

Instructions for installing Chromium on Ubuntu are in the Chromium section of our Customer-Hosted Installation documentation. Instructions for installing Chromium on Debian are in the Help Center article of that name.

Chromium is more difficult to install on some Linux distributions, such as Amazon Linux. Customers with Looker running on those distributions can install Chrome instead.

Version and Location

Chromium 65 or later is required, but the latest version is generally recommended. Make sure you install Chromium into an executable path on the machine that hosts the Looker instance. The Looker application needs to access Chromium using the chromium command or via a custom path set with the CHROMIUM_PATH environment variable.

If you are installing Chrome on a clustered Looker installation, the versions on all nodes must be fully identical. Even minor differences, such as different build numbers, can prevent enabling the Enhanced Rendering Labs feature (if you are using Looker 5.22 through 6.2).

Installation Steps

Chromium rendering will wait for all resources requested by the page to be completed before it sends the finished signal that prompts Looker to produce the rendered content. Due to the number and frequency of these resource requests, some networks can falsely flag the requests as malicious. This will cause the requests to be dropped, which will delay your rendered jobs.

These instructions can be used to install Chrome on Amazon Linux:

Use the sudo command to perform these steps as the Looker user. If you install Chromium while logged in as the root user, Looker might not be able to execute PDF or PNG rendering.

1. Get the latest version of Chrome by running:

   wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm
   

2. Install Chrome by running:

   sudo yum install ./google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm
   

3. Looker will look for the Chromium executable in/usr/bin/chromium, so you will need to create a symbolic link from there to Chrome. This can be done by running:

   sudo ln -s /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable /usr/bin/chromium
   

   You can use instructions like those from the intoli blog to resolve any dependency issues.

   This article recommends using their script by running:

   curl https://intoli.com/install-google-chrome.sh | bash
   

   You should always inspect any bash script and understand what it is doing before running it on your Looker instance.

See the Customer-hosted installation of rendering software documentation page for some optional environment variables, such as DISABLE_EXTERNAL_RENDER_ACCESS, available in Looker 21.14.