[FIXED] Selenium build unstable in Jenkins but fine locally

Issue

Ongoing issue in which tests pass locally but fail via Jenkins.

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Local always passes (windows VM)

src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/UMJmp.png" alt="Local" />

Jenkins sometimes passes (windows VM)

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Both the local tests and Jenkins tests are run on the same VM (Windows agent). I have followed the advice from these people by adding the following arguments with no change/success:

options = Options()
options.add_experimental_option('excludeSwitches', ['enable-logging'])  #Fixes the problem with console outputing warning "Bluetooth: bluetooth_adapter_winrt.cc:1074 Getting Default Adapter failed."
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
options.add_argument("enable-automation")
#options.add_argument("--headless") #CAUSES TIMEOUT ERROR
options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
options.add_argument("--dns-prefetch-disable")
options.add_argument("--disable-gpu")
options.add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage")
options.add_argument("--disable-browser-side-navigation")
options.add_argument("--force-device-scale-factor=1")
prefs = {"download.default_directory" : r"C:\Users\MyUser\Path\Directory\\"} 
options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
s = Service('chromeDriverPath/chromedriver.exe')
context.driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s, options=options,desired_capabilities=capa)

The --headless option creates an error:

Timed out receiving message from renderer: 10.000

so I have commented that out.

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Question: Why does my local always pass but my Jenkins is unstable even though they run tests on the same VM. How can I fix this?

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Background

I have looked at this similar question but no solution from it. Unfortunately I have spent many hours trying to fix this.

• Not the code - Im positive its not the code because I did all the code myself (Python + behave). Just meaning I tested it all through its creation extensively and once again it passes every time locally in Dev.
• Driver and Browser sync - Im looking into "the sync between the Selenium driver and the browser is the issue" as stated here by @ekostadinov.

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Installed Package Versions (PIP)

Package               Version
--------------------- ---------
allure-behave         2.9.45
allure-python-commons 2.9.45
async-generator       1.10
attrs                 21.4.0
behave                1.2.6
cairocffi             1.3.0
CairoSVG              2.5.2
certifi               2022.6.15
cffi                  1.15.1
charset-normalizer    2.1.0
chromedriver          2.24.1
click                 8.1.3
colorama              0.4.5
cryptography          37.0.4
cssselect2            0.6.0
defusedxml            0.7.1
et-xmlfile            1.1.0
h11                   0.13.0
idna                  3.3
lxml                  4.9.1
multipledispatch      0.6.0
numpy                 1.23.1
openpyxl              3.0.10
outcome               1.2.0
pandas                1.4.3
parse                 1.19.0
parse-type            0.6.0
Pillow                9.2.0
pip                   22.0.4
pluggy                1.0.0
pycparser             2.21
pygal                 3.0.0
pyOpenSSL             22.0.0
pypiwin32             223
pyshadow              0.0.4
PySocks               1.7.1
python-dateutil       2.8.2
python-docx           0.8.11
python-dotenv         0.20.0
pytz                  2022.1
pywin32               304
requests              2.28.1
selenium              4.3.0
setuptools            58.1.0
six                   1.16.0
sniffio               1.2.0
sortedcontainers      2.4.0
tinycss2              1.1.1
trio                  0.21.0
trio-websocket        0.9.2
urllib3               1.26.10
webdriver-manager     3.8.1
webencodings          0.5.1
wsproto               1.1.0

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Update 08/02/2022 4:11pm

Adding more implicit and explicit wait time fixed many of the flaky tests

• Some places needed time.sleep(x) to wait for downloads to finish before extracting csv/xlsx the timeout time bumped up on WebDriverWait(context.driver, timeOutTimeInSeconds).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, '{$path}')))

Still facing some flaky tests only through Jenkins involving WebDriverWait(context.driver, 180).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, '{$path}')))

Solution

There are couple of things you need to address as follows:

• Presumably you are on a windows system, so you need to drop the argument:

  options.add_argument("--disable-gpu")
  

  as the argument --disable-gpu was effective only for non-windows environment and is no more relevant.

• Some of the arguments are no more relevant, so you can drop them:

  options.add_argument("enable-automation")
  options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
  

• Ideally jenkins test should be executed as a non-root / non-admin user, so you may not need the arguments:

  options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
  options.add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage")
  

• Possibly you don't require the either of the following arguments as well:

  options.add_argument("--dns-prefetch-disable")
  options.add_argument("--disable-browser-side-navigation")
  options.add_argument("--force-device-scale-factor=1")
  

• You may like to tweak the other argument as:

  prefs = {"download.default_directory" : r'C:\Users\MyUser\Path\Directory\'} 
  options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
  

• Finally, you aren't using any capabilities so you can remove the argument from the constructor:

  desired_capabilities=capa
  

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Solution

Your effective code block can be:

options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")
options.add_experimental_option('excludeSwitches', ['enable-logging'])
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
prefs = {"download.default_directory" : r'C:\Users\MyUser\Path\Directory\'} 
options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
s = Service('chromeDriverPath/chromedriver.exe')
context.driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s, options=options)

Answered By - undetected Selenium
Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (JavaFixing Admin)