How to run Selenium sind runner in GitLabCI? - selenium

Question

I'm currently evaluating Selenium in combination with GitLab CI as a testing tool for our website. This is my current .gitlab-ci.yml:
variables:
GIT_STRATEGY: clone
GIT_DEPTH: 0
stages:
- tests
test:
stage: tests
image: node:latest
tags:
- linux
before_script:
- apt-get update
- apt-get install -y chromium
- npm install -g selenium-side-runner
- npm install -g chromedriver
script:
- selenium-side-runner My-UI-Test.side
I'm getting the following error:
FAIL ./DefaultSuite.test.js
● Test suite failed to run
WebDriverError: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally.
(unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)
(The process started from chrome location /usr/bin/chromium is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)
at Object.throwDecodedError (../../../../../../usr/local/lib/node_modules/selenium-side-runner/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/error.js:550:15)
at parseHttpResponse (../../../../../../usr/local/lib/node_modules/selenium-side-runner/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/http.js:560:13)
at Executor.execute (../../../../../../usr/local/lib/node_modules/selenium-side-runner/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/http.js:486:26)
I've searched for the error message DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist and it seems that Chrome doesn't like to be run with root privileges. A lot of answers suggest using the --no-sandbox or --disable-dev-shm-usage flags. But those are Chrome flags, and since I'm not calling Chrome directly, I can't use them. The website in question is also deployed from a different project, so I have no code to work with. The only files I can change are My-UI-Test.side and .side.yaml.

Answer 1

I have a separate project for my e2e tests, into which I've added a Dockerfile, my selenium .side file, as well as a config file .side.conf. This project uses the gitlab docker registry to upload the project as an image, that can be loaded directly into the gitlab-ci.
Here are my files for the e2e test project:
package.json
...
"scripts": {
"test": "selenium-side-runner test.side"
},
...
"dependencies": {
"selenium-side-runner": "^3.17.0",
"chromedriver": "^101.0.0"
}
These are the options that I am using, you might want to adjust a few things here and there. The capabilities are pretty much what you want, though.
I've also added the baseUrl key to this file instead of directly into the package.json, because I use the same image for several environments with changing URLs, that I'm replacing in my before_script whenever needed. (I left this out below, as your use case probably differs)
.side.yml
capabilities:
browserName: "chrome"
goog:chromeOptions:
binary: /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable
args:
- no-sandbox
- disable-dev-shm-usage
- headless
- nogpu
output-directory: results
output-format: junit
baseUrl: <baseURL>
The Dockerfile might include a few useless dependencies, you can likely remove a lot of them. Many of those are just copied over from my puppeteer Dockerfile, as they are using the google-chrome-stable binary very similarly. Downloading the fonts with the google-chrome-stable binary might not be needed in your case as well. So just adjust it to your needs.
Dockerfile
FROM node:14
RUN apt update
RUN apt install -y \
rsync \
grsync \
gnupg \
ca-certificates \
fonts-liberation \
libappindicator3-1 \
libasound2 \
libatk-bridge2.0-0 \
libatk1.0-0 \
libc6 \
libcairo2 \
libcups2 \
libdbus-1-3 \
libexpat1 \
libfontconfig1 \
libgbm1 \
libgcc1 \
libglib2.0-0 \
libgtk-3-0 \
libnspr4 \
libnss3 \
libpango-1.0-0 \
libpangocairo-1.0-0 \
libstdc++6 \
libx11-6 \
libx11-xcb1 \
libxcb1 \
libxcomposite1 \
libxcursor1 \
libxdamage1 \
libxext6 \
libxfixes3 \
libxi6 \
libxrandr2 \
libxrender1 \
libxss1 \
libxtst6 \
lsb-release \
wget \
xdg-utils
RUN apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y wget gnupg \
&& wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add - \
&& sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list' \
&& apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y google-chrome-stable fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-wqy-zenhei fonts-thai-tlwg fonts-kacst fonts-freefont-ttf libxss1 \
--no-install-recommends \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json /app
COPY .side.yml /app
COPY test.side /app
COPY results /app
RUN npm i -g chromedriver --unsafe-perm
RUN npm i -g selenium-side-runner --unsafe-perm
RUN npm install
And here I include it into my gitlab CI
gitlab-ci.yml:
e2e:
stage: test
image: <image-of-above-project>:1.0
variables:
GIT_STRATEGY: none
script:
- cat .side.yml
- npm run test
If you need more information on container registry, head to here: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/packages/container_registry/