Cypress crash with "There was an error reconnecting to the Chrome DevTools protocol"

[StefanoBalzarottiNozomi]

Current behavior

Cypress in version 12.12 and version 12.13, randomly crash with the following error

There was an error reconnecting to the Chrome DevTools protocol.
Please restart the browser.

Also reported in stackoverflow [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76302675/cypress-there-was-an-error-reconnecting-to-the-chrome-devtools-protocol/76371091#76371091] and reproduced by different users.

Resolved downgrading to version 12.11

Desired behavior

Cypress should not crash

Test code to reproduce

Any test

Cypress Version

12.12 / 12.13

Node version

18.4.0

Operating System

MacOs 12.5 / Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS

Debug Logs

No response

Other

No response

[nagash77]

Hi @StefanoBalzarottiNozomi Right now there doesn't seem to be enough information to reproduce the problem on our end. Unless we receive a reliable reproduction, we'll eventually have to close this issue until we can reproduce it. This does not mean that your issue is not happening - it just means that we do not have a path to move forward.

Please provide a reproducible example of the issue you're encountering. Here are some tips for providing a Short, Self Contained, Correct, Example and our own Troubleshooting Cypress guide.

Forking Cypress Test Tiny makes sharing a reproducible example easier to share and easier for our engineers to replicate your issues. This method also keeps the reproduction as simple as possible, which helps us eliminate potential causes and noise from the investigation.

[rbell-mfj]

Have run into this several times since upgrading to Cypress 12.12. Once it happened 5m42s into a test run, another time 7m6s in. May not be reproducible with a minimal example.

We are running cypress in a GitHub Actions runner as follows:

action: cypress-io/github-action@v5

startup output from cypress:

Cypress:        12.12.0
Browser:        Electron 106 (headless)
Node Version:   v16.16.0 (/home/runner/runners/2.304.0/externals/node16/bin/node)

[mrcrch]

We faced this too. On both local and CI (CircleCI) environments
The solution was downgrade to 12.11.0

Cypress:        12.13.0
Browser:        Electron 106 (headless)
Node Version:   v18.16.0 (/usr/local/bin/node)

[StefanoBalzarottiNozomi]

Sorry, I can't find a reproducible test case, I don't think it depends by the kind of test, because the error happens randomly with any test.
What I can say is that happens like after +10 min of execution, so I think it's not reproducible with a small test suite like Cypress Test Tiny.

Unlucky I can't share my test suite because it contains proprietary code.

Maybe there is a sort of memory leak, I see the memory increase during test execution, but I am not sure if related.

[nagash77]

Hi @StefanoBalzarottiNozomi , Unfortunately without a reproducible example we will not be able to investigate this any further at this time.

If you suspect memory problems may be causing this issue have you tried using the experimentalMemoryManagement flag? That may help but it is tough to say without being able to reproduce the problem.

I am going to close this issue for now until such time that we have a reproducible example. If you are able to reproduce the problem and share that with us please comment back here and we can reopen the issue.

[beatjost]

We also have this lately quite often - cypress test runs became very unstable...

09:52:14  There was an error reconnecting to the Chrome DevTools protocol. Please restart the browser.
09:52:14  
09:52:14  TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'webSocketDebuggerUrl')
09:52:14      at _._fetchDebuggerURL (<embedded>:2460:520933)
09:52:14      at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:96:5)
09:52:14      at async _._start (<embedded>:2460:520232)

using cypress 12.13.0, experiencing the same problem as the other posters with cypress run. For us it most notably happened during CI execution through Jenkins, there is no clear pattern as to when it happens but it's somewhen around the middle of the test suites when starting a new test suite fails.

• 40 test suites, (283 test cases)
• it runs into that issue after about 20 test suites went through (123 test cases)
• I've used DEBUG=cypress:server:util:process_profiler flag to check for potential usage issues but the output was similar with a small margin of difference

downgrading it to 12.11.0 seems to have done the trick for now

Cypress: 12.13.0
Browser: Electron 106
Node Version: 18.16.0

System specs (I highly doubt it's related to memory constraints, but here goes)

Model Name:	MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:	MacBookPro18,3
Chip:	Apple M1 Pro
Total Number of Cores:	8 (6 performance and 2 efficiency)
Memory:	32 GB

[nagash77]

@beatjost and @yarrysmod have you tried using the config flag I mentioned in my previous comment? Memory issues can happen even if the machine is robust like in your case @yarrysmod because chrome limits the amount of memory it can use.

[nagash77]

Also if either of you can provide a reproducible example demonstrating this behavior it would be extremely useful in debugging this issue.

@beatjost and @yarrysmod have you tried using the config flag I mentioned in my previous comment? Memory issues can happen even if the machine is robust like in your case @yarrysmod because chrome limits the amount of memory it can use.

yes, experimentalMemoryManagement has been applied along with reducing numTestsKeptInMemory to 10 (at one point I've set it to 0 running it with version 12.13.0, same issue). I've been running the test suites now in our in-house CI, managed to run through consecutively with 12.11.0 like @mrcrch said would address it. I will let you know if I can pinpoint what exact test may contribute to it, it's fairly random currently.

[beatjost]

With the experimentalMemoryManagement flag enabled, tests failed immediately...
Afterwards tried also the numTestsKeptInMemory option with value '10'. This worked one run, failed the next again.
Then this error again:

09:32:30  There was an error reconnecting to the Chrome DevTools protocol. Please restart the browser.
09:32:30  
09:32:30  TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'webSocketDebuggerUrl')
09:32:30      at _._fetchDebuggerURL (<embedded>:2460:520933)
09:32:30      at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:96:5)
09:32:30      at async _._start (<embedded>:2460:520232)

However, we also have some issue as well with the dri3-extension. This is also printend every time, but seems not to affect the test result...

08:50:06  Opening Cypress...
08:50:06  
08:50:06  DevTools listening on ws://127.0.0.1:39497/devtools/browser/f4a1581a-ad88-4d1e-be77-8df3b82e4497
08:50:06  libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)
08:50:06  [835:0608/065005.597709:ERROR:gpu_memory_buffer_support_x11.cc(44)] dri3 extension not supported.