WebDriverException: unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist while trying to initiate Chrome Browser

Question

I am trying to launch chrome with an URL, the browser launches and it does nothing after that.

I am seeing the below error after 1 minute:

Unable to         


        

Answer 1

As stated in this other answer:

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

Among the possible causes, I would like to mention the fact that, in case you are running an headless Chromium via Xvfb, you might need to export the DISPLAY variable: in my case, I had in place (as recommended) the --disable-dev-shm-usage and --no-sandbox options, everything was running fine, but in a new installation running the latest (at the time of writing) Ubuntu 18.04 this error started to occurr, and the only possible fix was to execute an export DISPLAY=":20" (having previously started Xvfb with Xvfb :20&).