Chromium seems to crash when running on Ubuntu in Docker

[dleber]

Firstly, thank you for this repo. I love that the stealthiness is implemented in the binary and that it integrates so seamlessly with Playwright/Pupeteer. I'll be inquiring about extra profiles as soon as I get this working.

I'm hitting an issue when running in an Ubuntu Docker container, details are below:

Setup

Host: Mac M2

Docker image largely taken from Playright's repo. I've modified it to install BotBrowser at the end.

FROM ubuntu:noble

ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
ARG TZ=America/Los_Angeles
ARG DOCKER_IMAGE_NAME_TEMPLATE="mcr.microsoft.com/playwright/python:v%version%-noble"

# Install Python
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y python3 curl && \
    rm /usr/lib/python3.12/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED && \
    update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3 1 && \
    curl -sSL https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py && \
    python get-pip.py && \
    rm get-pip.py && \
    # Feature-parity with node.js base images.
    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends git openssh-client gpg && \
    # clean apt cache
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* && \
    # Create the pwuser
    adduser pwuser

ENV PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=/ms-playwright
RUN mkdir -p /ms-playwright && chmod -R 777 /ms-playwright

RUN pip install --upgrade pip && \
    pip install playwright && \
    playwright install --with-deps chromium && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# Install BotBrowser
RUN curl -sSL https://github.com/MiddleSchoolStudent/BotBrowser/releases/download/20250523/botbrowser_20250525_136.0.7103.115_arm64.deb -o /tmp/botbrowser_20250525_136.0.7103.115_arm64.deb

RUN apt-get update && \
    dpkg -i /tmp/botbrowser_20250525_136.0.7103.115_arm64.deb || apt-get -f install -y --no-install-recommends && \
    rm /tmp/botbrowser_20250525_136.0.7103.115_arm64.deb && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

This is the script, largely taken from the BotBrowser Playwright demo:

import asyncio

from playwright.async_api import async_playwright

BOTBROWSER_EXEC_PATH: str = '/opt/chromium.org/chromium/chromium-browser'
BOT_PROFILE_PATH: str = './profiles/chrome136_win10_x64.enc'


async def main():
    async with async_playwright() as p:
        browser = await p.chromium.launch_persistent_context(
            user_data_dir="./user_data",
            executable_path=BOTBROWSER_EXEC_PATH,
            headless=True, # Set to True for production
            ignore_default_args=[
                "--disable-crash-reporter",
                "--disable-crashpad-for-testing",
                "--disable-gpu-watchdog",
            ],
            args=[
                "--no-sandbox",
                "--disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled",
                "--disable-audio-output",
                f"--bot-profile={BOT_PROFILE_PATH}",
            ],
        )
        page = await browser.new_page()

        # Remove Playwright's bindings to avoid detection.
        await page.add_init_script("""
            delete window.__playwright__binding__;
            delete window.__pwInitScripts;
        """)

        await page.goto("https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/")
        await page.wait_for_timeout(3000)  # Wait for the page to load completely
        await page.screenshot(full_page=True, path='./screenshot.png')

asyncio.run(main())

Error (snippet)

...
await self._main_frame.wait_for_timeout(timeout)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/playwright/_impl/_frame.py", line 756, in wait_for_timeout
    await self._channel.send("waitForTimeout", locals_to_params(locals()))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/playwright/_impl/_connection.py", line 61, in send
    return await self._connection.wrap_api_call(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/playwright/_impl/_connection.py", line 528, in wrap_api_call
    raise rewrite_error(error, f"{parsed_st['apiName']}: {error}") from None
playwright._impl._errors.TargetClosedError: Page.wait_for_timeout: Target page, context or browser has been closed

The error can occur on or after await page.goto, the exact line can vary because I suspect the browser is crashing on its own schedule. I've seen this same behavior using sync Playwright and various combinations of Chromium arguments.

✅ If I remove the executable_path parameter and use Playwright's default Chromium version, this script works.

✅ Furthermore a standalone call to BotBrowser Chromium works:

/opt/chromium.org/chromium/chromium-browser --no-sandbox --headless --bot-profile=./profiles/chrome136_win10_x64.enc  --disable-gpu --screenshot=screenshot.png --window-size=1280,800   https://bot.sannysoft.com/

I've tried verbose logging, but it doesn't seem to show anything useful.

I'd be interested to know if you could reproduce the issue or offer any guidance. I appreciate any help with this.

[dleber]

I've done some more testing, I'm not sure this is related to Playwright or Docker. I've tested on both AMD and ARM EC2s running Ubuntu. The tab seems to close a few seconds after loading. As far as I can tell, verbose logging does not suggest a crash.

This is my most recent test, running the latest AMD binary (botbrowser_20250601_136.0.7103.115_amd64.deb) on Ubuntu AMD EC2

Step 1

Launch the browser, listen on port 9222, opening tab with example.com

/opt/chromium.org/chromium/chromium-browser --headless=new --remote-debugging-port=9222 --no-sandbox --disable-gpu --bot-profile=./profiles/chrome136_win10_x64.enc "https://example.com"

Step 2

In a separate shell, run curl http://localhost:9222/json. This outputs

[ {
   "description": "",
   "devtoolsFrontendUrl": "https://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/serve_rev/@3c7485f85f4d764f68caeba539f7146fa3ce179d/inspector.html?ws=localhost:9222/devtools/page/F90AD2CD9DE2496D75805D92C5C0A6D4",
   "id": "F90AD2CD9DE2496D75805D92C5C0A6D4",
   "title": "Google Hangouts",
   "type": "background_page",
   "url": "chrome-extension://nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome/background.html",
   "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws://localhost:9222/devtools/page/F90AD2CD9DE2496D75805D92C5C0A6D4"
}, {
   "description": "",
   "devtoolsFrontendUrl": "https://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/serve_rev/@3c7485f85f4d764f68caeba539f7146fa3ce179d/inspector.html?ws=localhost:9222/devtools/page/7944DDF9CE98D274989C163E73BF6ADE",
   "id": "7944DDF9CE98D274989C163E73BF6ADE",
   "title": "Google Hangouts",
   "type": "background_page",
   "url": "chrome-extension://nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome/background.html",
   "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws://localhost:9222/devtools/page/7944DDF9CE98D274989C163E73BF6ADE"
}, {
   "description": "",
   "devtoolsFrontendUrl": "https://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/serve_rev/@3c7485f85f4d764f68caeba539f7146fa3ce179d/inspector.html?ws=localhost:9222/devtools/page/3F5D701056905D74C184A13E5EA9D35F",
   "id": "3F5D701056905D74C184A13E5EA9D35F",
   "title": "Example Domain",
   "type": "page",
   "url": "https://example.com/",
   "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws://localhost:9222/devtools/page/3F5D701056905D74C184A13E5EA9D35F"
} ]

An item for example.com is listed as expected. If I retry curl http://localhost:9222/json a few seconds later, the example.com item is not returned, only an entry for the hangouts extension is returned. Retry again a few more seconds later, and an empty list is returned, which suggests to me the browser is running but tabs have closed.

[olti-94]

Hi, we've updated the usage of docker, can you see if it helps you?