My nightwatch.js tests not runs in Chrome headless of CentOS - automation

Question

I run nightwatch.js tests using Nightwatch version 1.0.18 and It's working in windows environment but when I run it in centOS after installment of Xvfb I found below error.
Error while running .navigateTo() protocol action: invalid session id
Error while running .locateMultipleElements() protocol action: invalid session id
Error while running .locateMultipleElements() protocol action: invalid session id
Here is my nightwatch.json file code:
{
"src_folders": [
"./tests"
],
"output_folder": "./reports",
"custom_commands_path": "./custom_commands",
"custom_assertions_path": "",
"test_workers": false,
"webdriver": {
"start_process": true
},
"test_settings": {
"default": {
"webdriver": {
"port": 9515,
"server_path": "./node_modules/chromedriver/lib/chromedriver/chromedriver",
"cli_args": [
"--log",
"debug"
]
},
"skip_testcases_on_fail": true,
"desiredCapabilities": {
"browserName": "chrome",
"javascriptEnabled": true,
"acceptSslCerts": true,
"chromeOptions": {
"args": [
"headless",
"no-sandbox",
"disable-gpu"
]
}
}
}
}
}
am I missing something to run my tests in the centOS environment because it is running in the windows environment?

Answer 1

I had the same issue with Nightwatchjs and the npm chomedriver setup.
Background:
Everything was working until I just recently updated Chromium on my system. In addition to the errors in the original post, verbose logging also showed:
{
message: 'unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally',
error: [
"(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.)',
'(Driver info: chromedriver=2.46.628388 (4a34a70827ac54148e092aafb70504c4ea7ae926),platform=Linux 4.9.0-8-amd64 x86_64)'
],
}
After downloading the standalone chromedriver (2.46.628388) to match my Chromium version (72.0.3626.69) it was still showing the same errors.
Solution:
I ended up downloading an older version of Chromium (71.0.3578.127) and setting chromeOptions.binary to the new path of the chromium 71 binary. I also had to include 'no-sandbox' with chromeOptions.args.
Here is the snippet from the site mentioned above:
Downloading old builds of Chrome / Chromium
Let's say you want a build of Chrome 44 for debugging purposes. Google does not offer old builds as they do not have up-to-date security fixes.
However, you can get a build of Chromium 44.x which should mostly match the stable release. Here's how you find it:
Look in https://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/search/label/Stable%20updates for the last time "44." was mentioned.
Loop up that version history ("44.0.2403.157") in the Position Lookup
In this case it returns a base position of "330231". This is the commit of where the 44 release was branched, back in May 2015.*
Open the continuous builds archive
Click through on your platform (Linux/Mac/Win)
Paste "330231" into the filter field at the top and wait for all the results to XHR in.
Eventually I get a perfect hit: https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Mac/330231/
Sometimes you may have to decrement the commit number until you find one.
Download and run!

Answer 2

Upgrading to the latest version of chromedriver solved the issue for me. You can find the latest version here; https://www.npmjs.com/package/chromedriver

Answer 3

In my situation, when that error occurs:
Error while running .navigateTo() protocol action: invalid session id
I added the following code into .travis.yml:
addons:
chrome: stable