Google-chrome – Google Chrome – Auto log-off from sites

Sounds like it can't access its Sqlite database. I've had this before when I've had an instance of Chrome locked up somewhere, and started another process. (That's Chrome for Linux, admittedly, which is still in beta.) One tell tale sign of that - the bookmarks didn't have the proper icons either.

Has this problem persisted across reboots? If you haven't rebooted since you first saw the problem, I suggest you kill Chrome, then bring up task manager and make sure that there aren't any more Chrome processes running. Then restart it and see if it's behaving any better.

I too would ask you to start over, by uninstalling and killing all chromium processes.

An operational note, you really shouldn't be logging in as the system account. You log in as yourself, and if you need to do system things, become root temporarily.

Also, logging out will kill any processes started by you which haven't been placed in the background.

For install:

sudo /bin/bash
exec su - root
pgrep -l chromium    # ensure list is empty, otherwise kill those processes
                     # pkill chromium
apt install chromium-browser
exit
id   # confirm you are now yourself and not root
# start chrome with specific directory
chromium-browser --user-data=~/.config/chromium >/dev/null 2>&1 &
# you could make this an alias in your .bashrc:
# alias chrome='chromium-browser --user-data=~/.config/chromium >/dev/null 2>&1 &'

You could add nohup to keep it running after logout, but re-attaching to it after logging in is problematic.

Once chrome is started, edit settings:

Choose Continue where you left off
Choose Offer to save your web passwords (in advanced settings)