unknown error: session deleted because of page crash from unknown error: cannot determine loading status from tab crashed with ChromeDriver Selenium

Question

I'm using InstaPy which use Python and Selenium. I start the script per Cron and from time to time it crashes. So it'r really irregular, sometimes it runs well through. I'v posted on GitHub Repo as well already but didn't get an answer there, so i'm asking here now if someone has an idea why.

It's a digital ocean ubuntu server and i'm using it on headless mode. The driver version are visible on the log. here are error messages:

ERROR [2018-12-10 09:53:54] [user]  Error occurred while deleting cookies from web browser!
b'Message: invalid session id\n  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.44.609551 (5d576e9a44fe4c5b6a07e568f1ebc753f1214634),platform=Linux 4.15.0-42-generic x86_64)\n'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/root/InstaPy/instapy/util.py", line 1410, in smart_run
    yield
  File "./my_config.py", line 43, in <module>
    session.follow_user_followers(['xxxx','xxxx','xxxx','xxxx'], amount=100, randomize=True, interact=True)
  File "/root/InstaPy/instapy/instapy.py", line 2907, in follow_user_followers
    self.logfolder)
  File "/root/InstaPy/instapy/unfollow_util.py", line 883, in get_given_user_followers
    channel, jumps, logger, logfolder)
  File "/root/InstaPy/instapy/unfollow_util.py", line 722, in get_users_through_dialog
    person_list = dialog_username_extractor(buttons)
  File "/root/InstaPy/instapy/unfollow_util.py", line 747, in dialog_username_extractor
    person_list.append(person.find_element_by_xpath("../../../*")
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webelement.py", line 351, in find_element_by_xpath
    return self.find_element(by=By.XPATH, value=xpath)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webelement.py", line 659, in find_element
    {"using": by, "value": value})['value']
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webelement.py", line 633, in _execute
    return self._parent.execute(command, params)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 321, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: session deleted because of page crash
from unknown error: cannot determine loading status
from tab crashed
  (Session info: headless chrome=70.0.3538.110)
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.44.609551 (5d576e9a44fe4c5b6a07e568f1ebc753f1214634),platform=Linux 4.15.0-42-generic x86_64)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/root/InstaPy/instapy/instapy.py", line 3845, in end
    self.browser.delete_all_cookies()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 878, in delete_all_cookies
    self.execute(Command.DELETE_ALL_COOKIES)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 321, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: chrome not reachable
  (Session info: headless chrome=71.0.3578.80)
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.44.609551 (5d576e9a44fe4c5b6a07e568f1ebc753f1214634),platform=Linux 4.15.0-42-generic x86_64)

Any idea what the reason could be and how to solve it?

Answer 1

Though you see the error as:

Error occurred while deleting cookies from web browser!
b'Message: invalid session id\n  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.44.609551 (5d576e9a44fe4c5b6a07e568f1ebc753f1214634),platform=Linux 4.15.0-42-generic x86_64)\n'

The main exception is:

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: session deleted because of page crash
from unknown error: cannot determine loading status
from tab crashed

Your code trials would have given us some clues what going wrong.

---

Solution

There are diverse solution to this issue. However as per UnknownError: session deleted because of page crash from tab crashed this issue can be solved by either of the following solutions:

• Add the following chrome_options:

  chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')         
  

• Chrome seem to crash in Docker containers on certain pages due to too small /dev/shm. So you may have to fix the small /dev/shm size.

• An example:

  sudo mount -t tmpfs -o rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=512M tmpfs /dev/shm
  

• It also works if you use -v /dev/shm:/dev/shm option to share host /dev/shm

• Another way to make it work would be to add the chrome_options as --disable-dev-shm-usage. This will force Chrome to use the /tmp directory instead. This may slow down the execution though since disk will be used instead of memory.

  chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')        
  

---

from tab crashed

from tab crashed was WIP(Work In Progress) with the Chromium Team for quite some time now which relates to Linux attempting to always use /dev/shm for non-executable memory. Here are the references :

• Linux: Chrome/Chromium SIGBUS/Aw, Snap! on small /dev/shm
• Chrome crashes/fails to load when /dev/shm is too small, and location can't be overridden
• As per Comment61#Issue 736452 the fix seems to be have landed with Chrome v65.0.3299.6

---

Reference

You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:

• org.openqa.selenium.SessionNotCreatedException: session not created exception from tab crashed error when executing from Jenkins CI server