[🐛 Bug]: Selenium using a chrome with version less than v130 has started crashing after a short amount of use

[oscarduignan]

What happened?

After a little bit of time of using chromedriver with a browser version under chrome v130 via selenium/selenium-manager (we were using v122 and v125, but tested up to v129) we experience a crash after a little while, like in this screenshot

chromedriver.log

included an example that can be run with scala-cli (and I guess should be easy to translate to java, but apologies I'm not very familiar with it!)

this didn't seem to be occurring for us before last friday, we're not sure what's changed - seems like maybe closing and reopening browser before and after test rather than beforeall and afterall might mitigate it a bit but we're not totally sure

How can we reproduce the issue?

//> using scala 2.13
//> using dep "org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-java:4.22.0"

import org.openqa.selenium.By
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.{ChromeDriver, ChromeOptions}
import org.openqa.selenium.manager.SeleniumManager
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver

import java.util.concurrent.{ThreadLocalRandom, TimeUnit}
import java.util.logging.{FileHandler, Level, Logger}
import scala.reflect.classTag

/* Open a repl with `scala-cli repl Selenium.scala`
 *
 * Then try running this multiple times within the repl like
 * 
 * 1 to 10 foreach { i => Selenium.trySubmittingATechnicalSupportRequestWithAnInvalidEmail() }; println("ran 10 times")
 * ```
 */
object Selenium {
  private val logger = Logger.getLogger("")
  logger.setLevel(Level.FINE)
  logger.addHandler(new FileHandler("selenium.xml"))
  Logger.getLogger(classTag[RemoteWebDriver].runtimeClass.getCanonicalName).setLevel(Level.FINEST);
  Logger.getLogger(classTag[SeleniumManager].runtimeClass.getCanonicalName).setLevel(Level.SEVERE);
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.logfile", "chromedriver.log");
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.verboseLogging", "true");
  private val options = new ChromeOptions
  options.setBrowserVersion(sys.env.getOrElse("BROWSER_VERSION", "125"))
  options.addArguments("--disable-features=MediaRouter")
  //options.addArguments("--headless=new")
  options.addArguments("--no-sandbox")
  options.addArguments("--disable-setuid-sandbox")
  options.setAcceptInsecureCerts(true)
  private val driver = new ChromeDriver(options)
  driver.manage().window().maximize()

  def trySubmittingATechnicalSupportRequestWithAnInvalidEmail(): Unit = {
    driver.get("https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/contact/report-technical-problem")
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-name")).click();
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-name")).sendKeys("oscar duignan");
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-email")).click();
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-email")).sendKeys("invalid email so that this won't actually be sent to the technical support team");
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-action")).click();
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-action")).sendKeys("this is a test of selenium to see if I can trigger the issue without using ui-test-runner");
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-error")).click();
    driver.findElement(By.id("report-error")).sendKeys("nothing, this shouldn\'t get sent anywhere");
    driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".govuk-button")).click();
    // not sure if time open plays a part, so adding a random short delay
    TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.sleep(ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(200, 1000))
  }
}

Relevant log output

// I only included the logs around the error that mentioned devtools, let me know if you need more, but the file is 18mb - there's also logs attached to the description from chromedriver 

 <millis>1730215241567</millis>
  <nanos>355000</nanos>
  <sequence>38293</sequence>
  <logger>jdk.internal.httpclient.websocket.debug</logger>
  <level>FINE</level>
  <class>jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.WebSocketImpl$ReceiveTask</class>
  <method>lambda$processClose$0</method>
  <thread>36</thread>
  <message>[HttpClient-2-SelectorManager] [30s 548ms] [WebSocket] CompletionStage returned by onClose completed result=jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.WebSocketImpl@5fa99ec7[uri=ws://localhost:50113/devtools/browser/45be6456-b2aa-4abd-a18b-04aeacdbfcce] error=null</message>
  <param>jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.WebSocketImpl@5fa99ec7[uri=ws://localhost:50113/devtools/browser/45be6456-b2aa-4abd-a18b-04aeacdbfcce]</param>
  <param>???</param>
</record>
<record>
  <date>2024-10-29T15:20:41.567821Z</date>
  <millis>1730215241567</millis>
  <nanos>821000</nanos>
  <sequence>38294</sequence>
  <logger>jdk.internal.httpclient.websocket.debug</logger>
  <level>FINE</level>
  <class>jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.TransportImpl</class>
  <method>sendClose</method>
  <thread>36</thread>
  <message>[HttpClient-2-SelectorManager] [30s 548ms] [Transport] enter send close 1 statusCode=1000 reason.length=0</message>
  <param>1</param>
  <param>1000</param>
  <param>0</param>
</record>
<record>
  <date>2024-10-29T15:20:41.568288Z</date>
  <millis>1730215241568</millis>
  <nanos>288000</nanos>
  <sequence>38295</sequence>
  <logger>jdk.internal.httpclient.websocket.debug</logger>
  <level>FINE</level>
  <class>jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.TransportImpl$SendTask</class>
  <method>run</method>
  <thread>36</thread>
  <message>[HttpClient-2-SelectorManager] [30s 549ms] [Transport] enter send task</message>
</record>
<record>
  <date>2024-10-29T15:20:41.568313Z</date>
  <millis>1730215241568</millis>
  <nanos>313000</nanos>
  <sequence>38296</sequence>
  <logger>org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver</logger>
  <level>FINE</level>
  <class>org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver</class>
  <method>log</method>
  <thread>1</thread>
  <message>Executed: get (Response: SessionID: 5334d0caad14df893f0783c87a16af52, State: disconnected, Value: org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: disconnected: unable to send message to renderer
  (failed to check if window was closed: disconnected: not connected to DevTools)
  (Session info: chrome=125.0.6422.141)
Build info: version: '4.22.0', revision: 'c5f3146703*'
System info: os.name: 'Mac OS X', os.arch: 'x86_64', os.version: '14.0', java.version: '11.0.24'
Driver info: driver.version: RemoteWebDriver)</message>
</record>
<record>
  <date>2024-10-29T15:20:41.568600Z</date>
  <millis>1730215241568</millis>
  <nanos>600000</nanos>
  <sequence>38297</sequence>
  <logger>jdk.internal.httpclient.websocket.debug</logger>
  <level>FINE</level>
  <class>jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.TransportImpl$SendTask</class>
  <method>run</method>
  <thread>36</thread>
  <message>[HttpClient-2-SelectorManager] [30s 549ms] [Transport] load message</message>
</record>
<record>
  <date>2024-10-29T15:20:41.568773Z</date>
  <millis>1730215241568</millis>
  <nanos>773000</nanos>
  <sequence>38298</sequence>
  <logger>jdk.internal.httpclient.websocket.debug</logger>
  <level>FINE</level>
  <class>jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.MessageEncoder</class>
  <method>encodeClose</method>
  <thread>36</thread>
  <message>[HttpClient-2-SelectorManager] [30s 549ms] [Output] encode close statusCode=1000 reason=[pos=0 lim=0 cap=0] dst=java.nio.HeapByteBuffer[pos=0 lim=16384 cap=16384]</message>
  <param>1000</param>
  <param>0</param>
  <param>0</param>
  <param>0</param>
  <param>java.nio.HeapByteBuffer[pos=0 lim=16384 cap=16384]</param>
</record>
<record>
  <date>2024-10-29T15:20:41.568907Z</date>
  <millis>1730215241568</millis>
  <nanos>907000</nanos>
  <sequence>38299</sequence>
  <logger>jdk.internal.httpclient.websocket.debug</logger>
  <level>FINE</level>
  <class>jdk.internal.net.http.websocket.MessageEncoder</class>
  <method>encodeClose</method>
  <thread>36</thread>
  <message>[HttpClient-2-SelectorManager] [30s 549ms] [Output] reason [pos=0 lim=0 cap=0]</message>
  <param>0</param>
  <param>0</param>
  <param>0</param>
</record>
<record>

Operating System

Intel Mac (but also seen this in our CI which is linux)

Selenium version

Java 4.22.0, Java 4.25.0

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Chrome 122, Chrome 125, Chrome 129

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Chrome 125.0.6422.141

Are you using Selenium Grid?

No

[github-actions]

@oscarduignan, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

---

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Thank you!

[oscarduignan]

We've done a bit more investigation into this, because just using v130 brought it's own problems

It looks like adding this option to chrome prevents the crashing from initial testing

options.addArguments("--disable-features=OptimizationGuideModelDownloading")

When we run our tests with a http proxy, we can see that when we're using versions before 130, chrome is making a load of optimization requests in the background - and disabling those requests with the above stops the crashes

Bit more specific in terms of what was happening, it seemed like the crash was happening when a browser was used longer than 30 seconds (though it could stay open much longer when it wasn't being used, but as soon as you used it again after 30 seconds it would crash straight away)

So for us, some people weren't impacted if their tests used a new browser for each test and their individual tests completed in under 30 seconds

[diemol]

Selenium 4.26 with CDP bindings for v130 has been released.

If the issue still persists, please report it to the Chrome folks.

[devsaider]

I was able to resolve the issue by switching from the stable version of Chrome (130.0.6723.91) to the Canary version (132.0.6808.0). I also updated Selenium for Python to 4.26, but that alone didn’t resolve the issue.

[RoshanaliN]

I had raised an issue with chrome for Testing folks (https://issues.chromium.org/issues/376183216), I will close that now, as we have a work around now.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity since it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.