selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally error with Chromedriver 2.26 Selenium

Question

I am trying to set up chrome webdriver in ubuntu. I already did

pip install selenium

and I can do

from selenium import webdriver

To install chrome webdriver, I have tried many things. For example, I tired an answer from Can't use chrome driver for Selenium Here, I tried

1. Check you have installed latest version of chrome browser-> "chromium-browser -version"
2. If not, install latest version of chrome "sudo apt-get install chromium-browser"
3. Get the appropriate version of chrome driver from http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html
4. Unzip the chromedriver.zip
5. Move the file to /usr/bin directory sudo mv chromedriver /usr/bin
6. Goto /usr/bin directory and you would need to run something like "chmod a+x chromedriver" to mark it executable.
7. finally you can execute the code.

According to it, I could do

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

However, in the second line I am getting the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/../.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/chrome/webdriver.py", line 81, in __init__
    desired_capabilities=desired_capabilities)
  File "/home/../.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 157, in __init__
    self.start_session(capabilities, browser_profile)
  File "/home/../.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 252, in start_session
    response = self.execute(Command.NEW_SESSION, parameters)
  File "/home/../.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 321, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "/home/../.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.26.436382 (70eb799287ce4c2208441fc057053a5b07ceabac),platform=Linux 4.15.0-109-generic x86_64)

Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

Use webdriver-manager

webdriver-manager

Below 3 lines should do the job for you:

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install()) 

Answer 2

This error message...

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.26.436382 (70eb799287ce4c2208441fc057053a5b07ceabac),platform=Linux 4.15.0-109-generic x86_64)

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

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

• You are using chromedriver=2.26
• Release Notes of chromedriver=2.26 clearly mentions the following :

Supports Chrome v53-55

• Possibly you are using the latest chrome=83.0
• Release Notes of ChromeDriver v83.0 clearly mentions the following :

Supports Chrome version 83

So there is a clear mismatch between ChromeDriver v2.26 and the Chrome Browser v83.0

---

Solution

Ensure that:

• JDK is upgraded to current levels JDK 8u251.
• Selenium is upgraded to current levels Version 3.141.59.
• ChromeDriver is updated to current ChromeDriver v83.0 level.
• Chrome is updated to current Chrome Version 83.0 level. (as per ChromeDriver v83.0 release notes)
• If your base Web Client version is too old, then uninstall it and install a recent GA and released version of Web Client.
• Clean your Project Workspace through your IDE and Rebuild your project with required dependencies only.
• If your base Web Client version is too old, then uninstall it and install a recent GA and released version of Web Client.
• Take a System Reboot.
• Execute your @Test as non-root user.
• Always invoke driver.quit() within tearDown(){} method to close & destroy the WebDriver and Web Client instances gracefully.