WebDriverException: Message: Service /content/chromedriver unexpectedly exited. Status code was: -6 with ChromeDriver Google Colab and Selenium

Question

I was trying to run headless Chrome browser using Selenium to scrape contents from the web. I installed headless Chrome using wget and then unzipped in my current folder.

!wget "http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/2.25/chromedriver_linux64.zip"
!unzip chromedriver_linux64.zip

Now when I am loading the driver

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
import os
# instantiate a chrome options object so you can set the size and headless preference
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
chrome_options.add_argument("--window-size=1920x1080")

chrome_driver = os.getcwd() +"/chromedriver"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options,executable_path=chrome_driver)

I am getting an error

WebDriverException                        Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-67-0aeae0cfd891> in <module>()
----> 1 driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options, executable_path=chrome_driver)
  2 driver.get("https://www.google.com")
  3 lucky_button = driver.find_element_by_css_selector("[name=btnI]")
  4 lucky_button.click()
  5 /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/chrome/webdriver.py in __init__(self, executable_path, port, chrome_options, service_args, desired_capabilities, service_log_path)
 60             service_args=service_args,
 61             log_path=service_log_path)
---> 62         self.service.start()
 63 
 64         try:

 /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py in start(self)
 84         count = 0
 85         while True:
 ---> 86             self.assert_process_still_running()
 87             if self.is_connectable():
 88                 break

 /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py in assert_process_still_running(self)
 97             raise WebDriverException(
 98                 'Service %s unexpectedly exited. Status code was: %s'
 ---> 99                 % (self.path, return_code)
100             )
101 

WebDriverException: Message: Service /content/chromedriver unexpectedly exited. Status code was: -6

Update

So after some research I tried the other way

!apt install chromium-chromedriver
import selenium as se

options = se.webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('headless')

driver = se.webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)

On Google Colab which again gives me the same error

WebDriverException: Message: Service chromedriver unexpectedly exited. Status code was: -6

Answer 1

I have found the answer to the question about why I was getting an error. Please install the chromium-chromedriver and add it to your path variable as well as the bin directory.

This is the fully-fledged solution to the problem of how to scrape data using Selenium on Colab. There is one more method by using PhantomJS but this API has been deprecated by Selenium and hopefully they will remove it in the next Selenium update.

# install chromium, its driver, and selenium
!apt-get update
!apt install chromium-chromedriver
!cp /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromedriver /usr/bin
!pip install selenium
# set options to be headless, ..
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
# open it, go to a website, and get results
wd = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver',options=options)
wd.get("https://www.website.com")
print(wd.page_source)  # results

This would work for anyone who want to scrape their data on Google Colab and not on your local machine. Please execute the steps as shown sequentially in the same order.

You can find the notebook here https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1GFJKhpOju_WLAgiVPCzCGTBVGMkyAjtk .

Answer 2

This error message...

WebDriverException: Message: Service /content/chromedriver unexpectedly exited. Status code was: -6

...implies that the ChromeDriver exited unexpectedly.

Your main issue is the incompatibility between the version of the binaries you are using as follows:

• As per the line of code:

  !wget "http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/2.25/chromedriver_linux64.zip"
  

• You are using chromedriver=2.25

• Release Notes of chromedriver=2.25 clearly mentions the following :

Supports Chrome v53-55

• Though you haven't mentioned the version of Chrome Browser it is expected you are using one of the latest Chrome Browser releases.

So there is a clear mismatch between ChromeDriver v2.33 and the recently released Chrome Browser versions.

Solution

• Upgrade ChromeDriver to current ChromeDriver v2.44 level.
• Keep Chrome version between Chrome v69-71 levels. (as per ChromeDriver v2.44 release notes)

---

Update

I am not sure about google-colaboratory. The bottomline is you have to use the matching version of ChromeDriver with respect to the prevailing version of Google Chrome version installed.

However, you need to find a way to install Chrome or Chromium on Colab first. Then, you can use !wget and !unzip to download, unzip and start using the matching ChromeDriver version.

You can find a discussion on the compatibility between ChromeDriver and Chrome Browser in this discussion

Answer 3

This may not directly help you. But if eventually, you can't install Chrome + selenium, you can still use phantomjs + selenium. Like this notebook:

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1V62zhjw2V5buxdN1s9mqkLzh3FWqSq8S

But I would prefer Chrome, if possible.