Error in startup(): ! Chrome debugging port not open after 10 seconds.

[stla]

Hello,

My package giacR starts with this code:

library(chromote)

chrm <- Chrome$new(
  path = find_chrome(),
  args = "--disable-gpu --headless --remote-debugging-port=9222"
)
chromote <- Chromote$new(browser = chrm)
session  <- ChromoteSession$new(parent = chromote)

I have not tried it today but yesterday it worked fine. However, when I run this code today:

chrm <- Chrome$new(
  path = find_chrome(),
  args = "--disable-gpu --headless --remote-debugging-port=9222"
)

then I get the error message

Error in startup(): 
! Chrome debugging port not open after 10 seconds.

Today I set a value to the environment variables HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY. Could it be related? My laptop has also been updated (I don't know what have been updated).

[stla]

Yeah. I confirm this is due to HTTP_PROXY and NO_PROXY. I removed these two variables and it works now. What does that mean?

[stla]

I found a solution. In my onLoad function, I add:

.onLoad <- function(libname, pkgname) {

  Sys.unsetenv("HTTP_PROXY")

  ........

This works. In this way the HTTP_PROXY variable does not cause any problem.

Now I'm wondering: should I restore this variable at the end of the session? And how?

[alex-silverman]

I'm experiencing this same issue. I have not set HTTP_PROXY or NO_PROXY, and I used Sys.unsetenv() to be sure.

The original package I use that calls Chromote was shinytest2. It was working this morning. But now I'm just directly calling:

library(chromote)
b <- ChromoteSession$new()

And I get the error:

Error in `startup()`:
! Chrome debugging port not open after 10 seconds.

I definitely have Chrome (v118.0.5993.71), which I can launch from an R terminal (system2('cmd', args = '/c start chrome https://www.google.com'), and I'm running on Windows 10 (OS=20348.1970, version=21H2).

[dmurdoch]

Does chromote use chromedriver, like webshot2 does? This sounds like problems updating chromedriver to a version compatible with chrome v118.0.5993.71, which was quite recently released. See ropensci/wdman#34.

[alex-silverman]

I'm not sure if it does (though GPT says it interacts directly with a Chromium-based browser through Chrome DevTools Protocol), but this definitely coincides roughly with the timing of the Chrome update. I installed the beta version of chromedriver (https://googlechromelabs.github.io/chrome-for-testing/#beta) and updated my Windows system PATH to point to it, but I'm still getting the same error. My PATH wasn't pointing to Chromedriver before, either. So maybe chromote uses something else?

I also tried changing the browser to Edge, which is Chromium-based, following the steps here: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/chromote/readme/README.html#specifying-which-browser-to-use

1. Sys.setenv(CHROMOTE_CHROME="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\new_msedge.exe")
2. m <- Chromote$new( browser=Chrome$new(path="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\new_msedge.exe") )

[stla]

I think there's a timeout option for Chromote$new, did you try it? 10 seconds is the default value I think.

And did you try the args option?

      chrm <- Chrome$new(
        path = chromePath, # you can use 'find_chrome()'
        args = "--disable-gpu --headless --remote-debugging-port=9222"
      )
      chromote <- Chromote$new(browser = chrm)

[alex-silverman]

I couldn't figure out how to change the default_timeout parameter. I tried your code, but it resulted in the same error after this:

chrm <- Chrome$new(
    path = find_chrome(),
    args = "--disable-gpu --headless --remote-debugging-port=9222"
)

As a reminder, the error is:

Error in `startup()`:
! Chrome debugging port not open after 10 seconds.

I do have a clue: I've been developing and (recently) shinytest2-ing the app in VS Code. However, I'm not encountering the error in R Studio Server. Not sure what to make of that.

[gadenbuie]

Try setting options(chromote.timeout = 60) to timeout after 60, rather than 10, seconds.

[alex-silverman]

That successfully upped the time, but it still didn't work:

Error in `startup()`:
! Chrome debugging port not open after 60 seconds.

[alex-silverman]

In case it's helpful, here's the backtrace:

Backtrace:
     ▆
  1. └─ChromoteSession$new()
  2.   └─chromote (local) initialize(...)
  3.     └─chromote::default_chromote_object()
  4.       ├─chromote::set_default_chromote_object(Chromote$new())
  5.       └─Chromote$new()
  6.         └─chromote (local) initialize(...)
  7.           └─Chrome$new()
  8.             └─chromote (local) initialize(...)
  9.               └─chromote:::launch_chrome(path, args)
 10.                 └─chromote:::with_random_port(...)
 11.                   ├─base::tryCatch(...)
 12.                   │ └─base (local) tryCatchList(expr, classes, parentenv, handlers)
 13.                   │   └─base (local) tryCatchOne(expr, names, parentenv, handlers[[1L]])
 14.                   │     └─base (local) doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
 15.                   └─chromote (local) startup(port = port, ...)

And here's the specific line that fails:

chromote/R/utils.R

Line 153 in 84ac340

res <- startup(port = port, ...)

Similar to this StackOverflow post, it's working on RStudio Server, but not VS Code or RStudio app, on my VPN.

[gadenbuie]

Does chromote use chromedriver, like webshot2 does? This sounds like problems updating chromedriver to a version compatible with chrome v118.0.5993.71, which was quite recently released. See ropensci/wdman#34.

@dmurdoch I don't think chromote (nor webshot2) use chromedriver. webshot2 uses chromote and AFAIK chromote creates its interface from the protocol spec returned from the running Chrome instance that it tries to connect to.

Similar to this StackOverflow post, it's working on RStudio Server, but not VS Code or RStudio app, on my VPN.

@alex-silverman Can you try looking at the error output of the chrome process on your server? You can use code like the following, I've included the results I see when running chrome locally on my Mac.

library(chromote)

chrm <- Chrome$new(
  path = find_chrome(),
  args = "--disable-gpu --headless"
)

chrm$get_path()
#> [1] "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
chrm$get_port()
#> [1] 7676
readLines(chrm$get_process()$get_error_file())
#> [1] ""
#> [2] "DevTools listening on ws://127.0.0.1:7676/devtools/browser/0b0b64c4-039f-4375-9e74-a11a80e0fd29"

[dmurdoch]

@gadenbuie: Sorry for the noise. I guess it's Rselenium that uses chromedriver.

[alex-silverman]

@gadenbuie - I get the same error/failure on this line:

chrm <- Chrome$new(
  path = find_chrome(),
  args = "--disable-gpu --headless"
)

So I can't even run get_path() or get_port(), etc.

[gadenbuie]

@alex-silverman shoot, sorry, in retrospect it makes sense you wouldn't make it that far. I'm trying to figure out how we can get more logging details out of Chrome. We might not get much, but the error file I read above lives in your R session temp directory. You could try looking at the contents of the log files created in the process of launching (or trying to launch) chrome:

dir(tempdir(), pattern = "chrome-")

Is there anything helpful in there?

[alex-silverman]

woah, I think you might have found the answer! Looks like my admins are blocking it:

DevTools remote debugging is disallowed by the system admin.
[1018/131325.610:ERROR:dns_config_service.cc(273)] DNS config watch failed.

Let me check with them to confirm.

[leeroyaus]

Is a solution that retains HTTP_PROXY possible? After debugging, it seems running this function is what causes the error

> url(paste0("http://127.0.0.1:", port, "/json/protocol"), "rb")
Error in url(paste0("http://127.0.0.1:", port, "/json/protocol"), "rb") : 
  cannot open the connection to 'http://127.0.0.1:12007/json/protocol'
In addition: Warning message:
In url(paste0("http://127.0.0.1:", port, "/json/protocol"), "rb") :
  cannot open URL 'http://127.0.0.1:12007/json/protocol': HTTP status was '504 Gateway Timeout'

I've checked with our system admins and they have allowed debugging. If I enter the ip address above in Chrome it also seems to work fine

[s-elsheikh]

Hi,
I am writing here because I noticed that the error occurs depending on linux distro.
I am webscraping on a proxmox container. Everythig works in containers built using 22.04
Same container built on 24.04 gives the error.

after running:

chrm <- Chrome$new(
  path = find_chrome(),
  args = "--disable-gpu --headless"
)

# or
ChromoteSession$new()

I get the timeout error:

Error in startup():
! Chrome debugging port not open after 10 seconds.

trying: dir(tempdir(), pattern = "chrome-", full.names=TRUE)

content of tempfile:
Old Headless mode will be removed from the Chrome binary soon. Please use the new Headless mode (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/chromium/new-headless) or the chrome-headless-shell which is a standalone implementation of the old Headless mode (https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-headless-shell).

[1014/171004.068642:ERROR:socket_posix.cc(93)] CreatePlatformSocket() failed: Permission denied (13)
[1014/171004.068823:ERROR:socket_posix.cc(93)] CreatePlatformSocket() failed: Permission denied (13)
[1014/171004.068845:ERROR:devtools_http_handler.cc(319)] Cannot start http server for devtools.
[1014/171004.138276:WARNING:sandbox_linux.cc(430)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[1014/171004.139261:WARNING:viz_main_impl.cc(85)] VizNullHypothesis is disabled (not a warning)

I guess chromote is not using new headless mode?
Why is the error only in ubuntu 24.04?
Please let me know if I should provide more info.

Thanks
Samer

[gadenbuie]

@s-elsheikh These are the most important lines, which indicate that there's some kind of permissions issue. It's very unlikely that it's related to chromote using the legacy headless mode.

[1014/171004.068642:ERROR:socket_posix.cc(93)] CreatePlatformSocket() failed: Permission denied (13)
[1014/171004.068823:ERROR:socket_posix.cc(93)] CreatePlatformSocket() failed: Permission denied (13)
[1014/171004.138276:WARNING:sandbox_linux.cc(430)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[1014/171004.139261:WARNING:viz_main_impl.cc(85)] VizNullHypothesis is disabled (not a warning)

The issue is probably with Chrome and Ubuntu 24.04 or your specific environment. You can try setting the chromote.launch.echo_cmd option to TRUE so that chromote will echo the command used to launch Chrome, at which point you can use the command to run Chrome in headless mode without chromote's involvment to debug.

library(chromote)
options(chromote.launch.echo_cmd = TRUE)

b <- ChromoteSession$new()
#> Running '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome' \
#>   '--headless=old' '--remote-debugging-port=33697' \
#>   '--remote-allow-origins=http://127.0.0.1:33697' \
#>   '--force-color-profile=srgb' --disable-extensions --mute-audio

[fontikar]

Hi {chromote}maintainers! 👋

I'm new to the {chromote} and found myself here through using {webshot2} in my Quarto book. Pls let me know if you think this comment should be in a different repo! 😊

I'm currently struggling to render my book using Github Actions due to this same error message as OP.

I've had a crack at increasing the time out in the workflow file following @gadenbuie suggestion but I don't think its working because {chromote} is being called by quarto in a different session.

What is interesting is that was passing at one brief moment, however reverting back to that commit seems to now fail Github Actions.

Very hard to write a reprex for this context since its on CI but here is my best attempt. Book renders fine locally.

usethis:: create_from_github("invertau/inverthotspot")

renv::restore()

quarto::quarto_render()
quarto::quarto_preview()

Would really appreciate some advice and tips!

[fontikar]

Hi {chromote}maintainers! 👋

I'm new to the {chromote} and found myself here through using {webshot2} in my Quarto book. Pls let me know if you think this comment should be in a different repo! 😊

I'm currently struggling to render my book using Github Actions due to this same error message as OP.

I've had a crack at increasing the time out in the workflow file following @gadenbuie suggestion but I don't think its working because {chromote} is being called by quarto in a different session.

What is interesting is that was passing at one brief moment, however reverting back to that commit seems to now fail Github Actions.

Very hard to write a reprex for this context since its on CI but here is my best attempt. Book renders fine locally.

usethis:: create_from_github("invertau/inverthotspot")

renv::restore()

quarto::quarto_render()
quarto::quarto_preview()

Would really appreciate some advice and tips!

Folks, I've managed to bypass Github Actions by freezing my Quarto computations! Free free to mark my above comment as off topic! Thank you again :)