I m getting an error in my seleium chrome tests - Chrome failed to start exited abnormally

Question

I'm running the tests on Debian 7 but I've got no luck. I've tried with both Java versions 6 & 7, but still I have the same problem. Maybe I'l try java 8. But I'm not sure if that'll solve the issue. Neither should chromedriver v2.9 be a problem for me.

This is the error I get:

unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally   (Driver info: chromedriver=2.9.248316,platform=Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae x86) (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information) Command duration or timeout: 60.55 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: '3.2.0-4-686-pae', java.version: '1.7.0_25' Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
I have chromedriver 29 with chrome 34.0.1847.76 beta running on Debian 7 32 bits. I am using selenium-java 2.33.0

Just to ensure that its not an issue with Jenkins, I ran this command to test chromedriver:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" -d "{\"desiredCapabilities\":{\"platform\":\"ANY\",\"browserName\":\"chrome\",\"chromeOptions\":{\"args\":[],\"extensions\":[]},\"version\":\"\",\"chrome.switches\":[]}}" localhost:12495/session

I am getting the same error message:

{"sessionId":"210f3f837a798ee68cd91f089976d0c2","status":13,"value":{"message":"unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally\n  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.9.248316,platform=Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae x86)"}}

Same problem. Any help is appreciated :)

Answer 1

I've faced this issue before when working with jenkins on a server. Maybe this would help. The key concept here is to use Xvfb. PS: I don't know why, but I was suggested to do so in Stack overflow.

In Jenkins settings, add a global property:

key : DISPLAY
value:0:0

And, in your server start Xvfb in background:

Xvfb :0 -ac -screen 0 1024x768x24 &