unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally (Driver info: chromedriver=2.8.undefined

Question

When running selenium test from jenkins, I get this error:

org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.8.undefined,platform=Linux 3.13-1-686-pae x86) (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)
Command duration or timeout: 20.54 seconds
Build info: version: '2.33.0', revision: '4ecaf82108b2a6cc6f006aae81961236eba93358', time: '2013-05-22 12:00:17'
System info: os.name: 'Linux', os.arch: 'i386', os.version: '3.13-1-686-pae', java.version: '1.6.0_45'
Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver

and further in the stack trace:

DEBUG - Sending request: POST /session HTTP/1.1
DEBUG - >> "POST /session HTTP/1.1[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - >> "Accept: application/json, image/png[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - >> "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - >> "Content-Length: 143[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - >> "Host: localhost:30992[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - >> "Connection: Keep-Alive[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - >> "[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - >> POST /session HTTP/1.1
DEBUG - >> Accept: application/json, image/png
DEBUG - >> Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
DEBUG - >> Content-Length: 143
DEBUG - >> Host: localhost:30992
DEBUG - >> Connection: Keep-Alive
DEBUG - >> "{"desiredCapabilities":{"platform":"ANY","browserName":"chrome","chromeOptions":{"args":[],"extensions":[]},"version":"","chrome.switches":[]}}"
DEBUG - << "HTTP/1.1 200 OK[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - << "Content-Length:218[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - << "Content-Type:application/json; charset=utf-8[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - << "Connection:close[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - << "[\r][\n]"
DEBUG - Receiving response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
DEBUG - << HTTP/1.1 200 OK
DEBUG - << Content-Length:218
DEBUG - << Content-Type:application/json; charset=utf-8
DEBUG - << Connection:close
DEBUG - << "{"sessionId":"a272d037ff7f0bff2cfb2a49e052c02a","status":13,"value":{"message":"unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally\n  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.8.undefined,platform=Linux 3.13-1-686-pae x86)"}}"
DEBUG - Connection shut down

I am not using selenium grid.

The strange thing is that I am able to launch chrome when sending commands to chromedriver directly as in the following command:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" -d "{\"desiredCapabilities\":{\"platform\":\"ANY\",\"browserName\":\"chrome\",\"chromeOptions\":{\"args\":[],\"extensions\":[]},\"version\":\"\",\"chrome.switches\":[]}}" localhost:9515/session

A Chromimum window opens here.

I am using Debian jessie (testing) with chromimum and chromedriver installed with aptitude. This is to get homogeneous versions.

$ google-chrome  -version
Chromium 33.0.1750.152 Debian jessie/sid

./chromedriver -v
Starting ChromeDriver (v2.8.undefined) on port 9515

I have also created an other issue with a previous version of Debian, you could read to know more what I tried before. unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally (Driver info: chromedriver=2.9

Are you trying to use headless chromium? Is your jenkins server on X? If not you can use X framebuffer. — Gat, Oct 01 '15 at 16:35
no just normal chrome. Jenkins is running on laptop with gnome. with x framebuffer it works but can't understand why xframebuffer is needed in my case. — redochka, Oct 02 '15 at 08:44
I am having similar issue, i am getting the same error with x framebuffer, any other suggestions? — Ashish Musale, May 11 '16 at 14:04

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 26 '18 at 11:25

At least on a linux machine, I think chrome needs an X11 display in order to start up. You can provide that as a regular display (when you run it as a normal user on a desktop environment), as a connection through a network to a normal remote or local display (e.g. through vnc server) or through a virtual apparatus like X virtual framebuffer.

For your purposes (testing) I'd say that Xvfb is probably the best option. See here for an example using it for testing.

unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally (Driver info: chromedriver=2.8.undefined

1 Answers1