Protractor tests fail on chrome v56 & v57 - chrome not reachable

I run Protractor tests on an Ubuntu 16 server via xvfb. This was working fine with 4.0.14 and google-chrome-stable v54. When I updated to Protractor 5.1.1 (which requires Chrome v55+), and chrome 57 (latest), my tests stopped working, and would timeout with:

[chrome #01-1] WebDriverError: chrome not reachable
[chrome #01-1]   (Driver info: chromedriver=2.28.455506 (18f6627e265f442aeec9b6661a49fe819aeeea1f),platform=Linux 4.4.0-67-generic x86_64)
[chrome #01-1]     at WebDriverError (./node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/error.js:27:5)
[chrome #01-1]     at Object.checkLegacyResponse (./node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/error.js:505:15)
[chrome #01-1]     at parseHttpResponse (./node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/http.js:509:13)
[chrome #01-1]     at doSend.then.response (./node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/http.js:440:13)
[chrome #01-1]     at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:103:7)
[chrome #01-1] From: Task: WebDriver.createSession()
[chrome #01-1]     at Function.createSession (./node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver.js:777:24)
[chrome #01-1]     at Function.createSession (./node_modules/selenium-webdriver/chrome.js:709:29)
[chrome #01-1]     at Direct.getNewDriver (./node_modules/protractor/lib/driverProviders/direct.ts:90:25)
[chrome #01-1]     at Runner.createBrowser (./node_modules/protractor/lib/runner.ts:225:39)
[chrome #01-1]     at q.then.then (./node_modules/protractor/lib/runner.ts:391:27)
[chrome #01-1]     at _fulfilled (./node_modules/q/q.js:834:54)
[chrome #01-1]     at self.promiseDispatch.done (./node_modules/q/q.js:863:30)
[chrome #01-1]     at Promise.promise.promiseDispatch (./node_modules/q/q.js:796:13)
[chrome #01-1]     at ./node_modules/q/q.js:556:49
[chrome #01-1]     at runSingle (./node_modules/q/q.js:137:13)

Impact: Does not occur with chrome v54 or v55 Occurs with both directConnect and when specifying the correct seleniumServerJar in config Occurs with latest Protractor v4x and v5x Node v6.10.0

[dinvlad]

UPDATE: Got it to work!

According to https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromedriver/issues/detail?id=878, it’s ChromeDriver that doesn’t like mixing Chrome’s --remote-debugging-port option, because it’s connecting over that same port if I understand that correctly. So I’ve just removed that option from Protractor config, and voila:

  capabilities: {
    browserName: 'chrome',
    chromeOptions: {
      args: [
        "--headless",
        "--disable-gpu"
      ],
    },
  },

@qualityshepherd, you might be interested in using this option instead of Xvfb - see if that solves your issues as well. Granted that doesn’t address the problem with Xvfb itself, but if we can avoid another tool that’s even better, IMO.

[qualityshepherd]

Agreed… I’d love to see all the browsers allow headless runs. I’d love to run Safari at all 🚎

Oh Safari… the new IE6