[python] Selenium: WebDriverException:Chrome failed to start: crashed as google-chrome is no longer running so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed

Recently I switched computers and since then I can't launch chrome with selenium. I've also tried Firefox but the browser instance just doesn't launch.

from selenium import webdriver

d = webdriver.Chrome('/home/PycharmProjects/chromedriver')

d.get('https://www.google.nl/')

i get the following error:

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: crashed
  (unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)
  (The process started from chrome location /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.43.600233, platform=Linux 4.15.0-38-generic x86_64)

i have the latest chrome version and chromedriver installed

EDIT: After trying @b0sss solution i am getting the following error.

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: crashed
  (chrome not reachable)
  (The process started from chrome location /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome is no longer running, so chromedriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.43.600233 (523efee95e3d68b8719b3a1c83051aa63aa6b10d),platform=Linux 4.15.0-38-generic x86_64)

A simple solution that no one else has said but worked for me was not running without sudo or not as root.

Assuming that you already downloaded chromeDriver, this error is also occurs when already multiple chrome tabs are open.

If you close all tabs and run again, the error should clear up.

Make sure that both the chromedriver and google-chrome executable have execute permissions

sudo chmod -x "/usr/bin/chromedriver"

sudo chmod -x "/usr/bin/google-chrome"

This error has been happening randomly during my test runs over the last six months (still happens with Chrome 76 and Chromedriver 76) and only on Linux. On average one of every few hundred tests would fail, then the next test would run fine.

Unable to resolve the issue, in Python I wrapped the driver = webdriver.Chrome() in a try..except block in setUp() in my test case class that all my tests are derived from. If it hits the Webdriver exception it waits ten seconds and tries again.

It solved the issue I was having; not elegantly but it works.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.common.exceptions import WebDriverException

try:
    self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options, desired_capabilities=capabilities)
except WebDriverException as e:
    print("\nChrome crashed on launch:")
    print(e)
    print("Trying again in 10 seconds..")
    sleep(10)
    self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options, desired_capabilities=capabilities)
    print("Success!\n")
except Exception as e:
    raise Exception(e)

hope this helps someone. this worked for me on Ubuntu 18.10

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
driver = webdriver.Chrome('/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromedriver', options=chrome_options)
driver.get('http://www.google.com')
print('test')
driver.close()

i had same problem. I was run it on terminal with "sudo geany", you should run it without "sudo" just type on terminal "geany" and it is solved for me.

i faced the same problem but i solved it by moving the chromedriver to this path '/opt/google/chrome/'

and this code works correctly

from selenium.webdriver import Chrome
driver = Chrome('/opt/google/chrome/chromedrive')
driver.get('https://google.com')

For RobotFramework

I solved it! using --no-sandbox

${chrome_options}=  Evaluate  sys.modules['selenium.webdriver'].ChromeOptions()  sys, selenium.webdriver
Call Method    ${chrome_options}    add_argument    test-type
Call Method    ${chrome_options}    add_argument    --disable-extensions
Call Method    ${chrome_options}    add_argument    --headless
Call Method    ${chrome_options}    add_argument    --disable-gpu
Call Method    ${chrome_options}    add_argument    --no-sandbox
Create Webdriver    Chrome    chrome_options=${chrome_options}

Instead of

Open Browser    about:blank    headlesschrome
Open Browser    about:blank    chrome

I had a similar issue, and discovered that option arguments must be in a certain order. I am only aware of the two arguments that were required to get this working on my Ubuntu 18 machine. This sample code worked on my end:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

options = Options()
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')

d = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=r'/home/PycharmProjects/chromedriver', chrome_options=options)
d.get('https://www.google.nl/')

This error message...

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: crashed
  (unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)
  (The process started from chrome location /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)

...implies that the ChromeDriver was unable to initiate/spawn a new WebBrowser i.e. Chrome Browser session.

Your main issue is the Chrome browser is not installed at the default location within your system.

The server i.e. ChromeDriver expects you to have Chrome installed in the default location for each system as per the image below:

¹For Linux systems, the ChromeDriver expects /usr/bin/google-chrome to be a symlink to the actual Chrome binary.

Solution

In case you are using a Chrome executable in a non-standard location you have to override the Chrome binary location as follows:

• Python Solution:

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
  
  options = Options()
  options.binary_location = "C:\\path\\to\\chrome.exe"    #chrome binary location specified here
  options.add_argument("--start-maximized") #open Browser in maximized mode
  options.add_argument("--no-sandbox") #bypass OS security model
  options.add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage") #overcome limited resource problems
  options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
  options.add_experimental_option('useAutomationExtension', False)
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
  driver.get('http://google.com/')
  

• Java Solution:

  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\\Utility\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe");
  ChromeOptions opt = new ChromeOptions();
  opt.setBinary("C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe");  //chrome binary location specified here
  options.addArguments("start-maximized");
  options.setExperimentalOption("excludeSwitches", Collections.singletonList("enable-automation"));
  options.setExperimentalOption("useAutomationExtension", false);
  WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(opt);
  driver.get("https://www.google.com/");
  

in my case, the error was with www-data user but not with normal user on development. The error was a problem to initialize an x display for this user. So, the problem was resolved running my selenium test without opening a browser window, headless:

opts.set_headless(True)

I came across this error on linux environment. If not using headless then you will need

from sys import platform
    if platform != 'win32':
        from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
        display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
        display.start()

I encountered the exact problem running on docker container (in build environment). After ssh into the container, I tried running the test manually and still encountered

(unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)
     (The process started from chrome location /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable is 
      no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)

When I tried running chrome locally /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable, error message

Running as root without --no-sandbox is not supported

I checked my ChromeOptions and it was missing --no-sandbox, which is why it couldn't spawn chrome.

capabilities = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.chrome(
  chromeOptions: { args: %w(headless --no-sandbox disable-gpu window-size=1920,1080) }
)