[FIXED] Is Chromedriver_autoinstaller still working?

Issue

I would like to run chromedriver_autoinstaller. I follow example here: https://pypi.org/project/chromedriver-autoinstaller/

from selenium import webdriver
import chromedriver_autoinstaller


chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()  # Check if the current version of chromedriver exists
                                      # and if it doesn't exist, download it automatically,
                                      # then add chromedriver to path

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("http://www.python.org")
assert "Python" in driver.title

But I got an error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/code.py", line 90, in runcode
    exec(code, self.locals)
  File "<input>", line 9, in <module>
  File "/home/vojtam/Desktop/greads_scrape/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/chrome/webdriver.py", line 76, in __init__
    RemoteWebDriver.__init__(
  File "/home/vojtam/Desktop/greads_scrape/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 157, in __init__
    self.start_session(capabilities, browser_profile)
  File "/home/vojtam/Desktop/greads_scrape/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 252, in start_session
    response = self.execute(Command.NEW_SESSION, parameters)
  File "/home/vojtam/Desktop/greads_scrape/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 321, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "/home/vojtam/Desktop/greads_scrape/venv/lib/python3.8/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: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist

What does it mean? Is this package still working?

Solution

This error message...

org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist 

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

A common cause for Chrome to crash during startup is running Chrome as root user (administrator) on Linux. While it is possible to work around this issue by passing --no-sandbox flag when creating your WebDriver session, such a configuration is unsupported and highly discouraged. You need to configure your environment to run Chrome as a regular user instead.

Execute your test as a regular user.

---

References

You can find a couple of detailed discussions in:

• WebDriverException: unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist while trying to initiate Chrome Browser
• unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist error while executing Selenium UI test cases on ubuntu
• Tests fail immediately with unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist when running Selenium grid through systemd

Answered By - DebanjanB