Failed to start and/or connect to Chrome. Please make sure Chrome is running

[abriginets]

Hello. I'm trying to run Prerender on my VPS but unsuccessfully. I did everything like README says but stiil can't launch it. I tried to run node server.js, but console throws an error:

2018-06-15T15:42:50.714Z Starting Prerender
2018-06-15T15:42:50.716Z Starting Chrome
2018-06-15T15:42:50.717Z unable to find Chrome install. Please specify with chromeLocation
2018-06-15T15:42:50.718Z Prerender server accepting requests on port 3000
2018-06-15T15:42:50.718Z undefined
2018-06-15T15:42:50.719Z Failed to start and/or connect to Chrome. Please make sure Chrome is running
2018-06-15T15:42:50.719Z Stopping Chrome

Then I've changed my config to:

var server = prerender({
    chromeLocation: './lib/browsers/'
});

But still I'm having an issue with this:

2018-06-15T15:45:39.971Z Starting Prerender
2018-06-15T15:45:39.973Z Starting Chrome
2018-06-15T15:45:39.978Z Prerender server accepting requests on port 3000
2018-06-15T15:45:39.979Z { Error: spawn EACCES
    at ChildProcess.spawn (internal/child_process.js:330:11)
    at exports.spawn (child_process.js:500:9)
    at Promise (/var/www/developer/flaut/dev/prerender/lib/browsers/chrome.js:24:22)
    at new Promise (<anonymous>)
    at Object.chrome.spawn (/var/www/developer/flaut/dev/prerender/lib/browsers/chrome.js:15:9)
    at Object.server.spawnBrowser (/var/www/developer/flaut/dev/prerender/lib/server.js:93:22)
    at Promise (/var/www/developer/flaut/dev/prerender/lib/server.js:69:8)
    at new Promise (<anonymous>)
    at Object.server.startPrerender (/var/www/developer/flaut/dev/prerender/lib/server.js:68:9)
    at Object.server.start (/var/www/developer/flaut/dev/prerender/lib/server.js:48:7) errno: 'EACCES', code: 'EACCES', syscall: 'spawn' }
2018-06-15T15:45:39.983Z Failed to start and/or connect to Chrome. Please make sure Chrome is running
2018-06-15T15:45:39.983Z Stopping Chrome

Any ideas on how could I fix that? Many thanks.

[daniel-keller]

I had a similar issue. After more digging into the documentation I found that chrome isn't included in with prerender (https://github.com/prerender/prerender#chromelocation). The chromeLocation that you are using in your configuration only contains a javascript interface for chrome. You will need to install Chrome separately and then Update your chromeLocation to point to the installation.

[abriginets]

Hello, @daniel-keller! Thank you for your help. How should I install Headless Chrome? It's an Ubuntu package or npm package? Much thanks in advance.

[daniel-keller]

On ubuntu I did it through apt-get https://askubuntu.com/a/510186. After installing I changed the chromeLocation to "/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable". I did run into an issue where prerender would launch chrome and then immediately die. The only solution I've found for this #450 but I think that this solution opens up some security holes so I'm still looking for a better solution.

[thoop]

Sorry for the delay here. @daniel-keller thanks for the help!

https://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/google_chrome?dist=stable is a good way to install Chrome on Ubuntu. We've used that package without any issues connecting or immediately dying so please let us know if you run into anything like that!

@JamesJGoodwin feel free to reopen or create a new issue if you run into any problems after you get Chrome downloaded and we'll try to make that more clear in the documentation.