Selenium + Google Colab error: 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH

Question

I'm using the code offered by @korakot-chaovavanich in this thread How to use Selenium on Colaboratory Google?. I really need to have a solution to make it work on Google Colab.

# install chromium, its driver, and selenium
!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.google.com")
print(wd.page_source)  # results

I've tested in Google Colab, but I have no idea why it fails to work. I tried to look under /usr/lib but I couldn't find any "chromium-browser" folder. I can't figure where chromedriver is being installed to in Google Colab.

Error message from executing this code in Google Colab:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  libnvidia-common-410
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  chromium-browser chromium-browser-l10n chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
Suggested packages:
  webaccounts-chromium-extension unity-chromium-extension adobe-flashplugin
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  chromium-browser chromium-browser-l10n chromium-chromedriver
  chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 16 not upgraded.
Need to get 68.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 251 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Ign:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra amd64 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
Ign:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-browser amd64 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
Ign:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-browser-l10n all 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
Ign:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-chromedriver amd64 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
Err:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra amd64 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
Err:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-browser amd64 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
Err:3 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-browser-l10n all 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
Err:4 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 chromium-chromedriver amd64 74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1_amd64.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-browser_74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1_amd64.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-browser-l10n_74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1_all.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-chromedriver_74.0.3729.169-0ubuntu0.18.04.1_amd64.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.31 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?
cp: cannot stat '/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromedriver': No such file or directory
Requirement already satisfied: selenium in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages (3.141.0)
Requirement already satisfied: urllib3 in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages (from selenium) (1.24.3)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileNotFoundError                         Traceback (most recent call last)
/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py in start(self)
     75                                             stderr=self.log_file,
---> 76                                             stdin=PIPE)
     77         except TypeError:

4 frames
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'chromedriver': 'chromedriver'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

WebDriverException                        Traceback (most recent call last)
/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py in start(self)
     81                 raise WebDriverException(
     82                     "'%s' executable needs to be in PATH. %s" % (
---> 83                         os.path.basename(self.path), self.start_error_message)
     84                 )
     85             elif err.errno == errno.EACCES:

WebDriverException: Message: 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH. Please see https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home

looks like chrome driver is not installed properly. try installing it manually and set the path accordingly. — Murthi, Jul 01 '19 at 05:21
Sorry, how do I install it manually? This is on Google Colab. — Christopher Chua, Jul 02 '19 at 02:47

score 22 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 02 '19 at 13:11

The problem comes from a version mismatch between Google Chrome and Chromium Browser, leading to the command apt install chromium-chromedriver to fail. It is probably due to an update from Selenium. You need to update every packages with the command apt-get update, to avoid version mismatch of your tools. Try this on colab:

# 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

Solution working perfectly. I have upvoted your answer but I currently have less than 15 reputation so it doesn't show. Thank you very much! — Christopher Chua, Jul 05 '19 at 06:09
I'm revisiting this question and am running into a variety of errors: with options arguments being passed it errors as multiple options, but when I attempt to use it without any options it tells me that the chromedriver unexpectedly exited. Any updates? — Benjamin Diaz, Jul 25 '23 at 19:50

Selenium + Google Colab error: 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH

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