selenium - unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally (Driver info: chromedriver=2.9

Question

I am trying to run Selenium tests on Debian 7 but without success.

The error is:

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

Following this link, chromedriver 29 is the right version for chrome 34. And anyway, previous versions do not work on Debian 7 because of glibc version …

----------ChromeDriver v2.9 (2014-01-31)----------
Supports Chrome v31-34

[update 1]

I tried with with both java 7 and java 6, still the same problem. May be I should try with java 8 ^^

[update 2]

I am using this command to test the chrome driver, to make sure that is not an issue with jenkins:

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
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.9.248316,platform=Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae x86)"}}

Any help to know what is going on would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

I finally managed to get Selenium tests starting the Chrome Driver on my laptop (server).

The important bit is to use Xvfb. Don't ask me why but once you accept this fact follow these steps (more detailed than @Anon answer)

• In you Jenkins settings add a global property

  key : DISPLAY
  value:0:0
  

• On your server start Xvfb in the background:

   Xvfb :0 -ac -screen 0 1024x768x24 &