Tech/HowTo/Sideload Widevine Chromium

Goal

Play movies, TV, and other DRM works on Youtube with Chromium browser.

Manual First Method Debian

1. Spin up a system and install Google Chrome browser https://www.google.com/chrome/?platform=linux
2. Copy temphost@/opt/google/chrome/WidevineCdm to desiredhost@/usr/lib/chromium/
3. Check perms and details look the same from the source
4. Ensure all chromium processes are stopped
5. Start Chromium and test

Faster Method Debian

• https://lathama.net/git/lathama/widevine_on_chromium

Get latest download url + version from https://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/google_chrome/stable/main/base/google-chrome-stable Download http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/pool/main/g/google-chrome-stable/google-chrome-stable_130.0.6723.116-1_amd64.deb

Early method as root because I am evil.

cd /usr/src/
wget http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/pool/main/g/google-chrome-stable/google-chrome-stable_130.0.6723.116-1_amd64.deb
dpkg-deb -x google-chrome-stable_130.0.6723.116-1_amd64.deb .
ls opt/google/chrome/WidevineCdm/
LICENSE  manifest.json  _platform_specific
cp -r opt/google/chrome/WidevineCdm /usr/lib/chromium/
ps faxu | grep -i chrom

Testing

I used Youtube to test. There are options like https://github.com/proprietary/chromium-widevine/blob/master/test-widevine.html and even they widevine project website but I got caught in an Auth loop there.

• https://integration.widevine.com/diagnostics could be useful

Trouble Shooting

You could be missing a linked library so use ldd to check.

ldd /usr/lib/chromium/WidevineCdm/_platform_specific/linux_x64/libwidevinecdm.so 
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fffc650c000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f4e06d24000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f4e06d1f000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f4e06c40000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f4e06c20000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f4e0241f000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f4e06d41000)