Troubleshooting and FAQ¶

Here are few typical issues you may encounter.

Unable to acquire a lockfile?¶

If you get an error like this, it means the Chrome browser is already running. You can either kill the browser process or restart the container (in the case of Docker).

Check if any Chrome process is running:

ps aux | grep chromium

If so, you can kill it:

pkill -f chromium

Note

Replace chromium with chrome if you are using the Chrome browser!

Then, clear the lockfile:

./surfmeter-automator-headless clearLockfile

This should make it possible to launch the Automator again.

How can I see the Virtual Display remotely? (VNC Connection)¶

Please refer to the VNC Connection guide.

What if I get ChromeDriver Errors?¶

In case you get an error like "This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version ...", your ChromeDriver version is not up to date.

If you are using the Native Execution method, please run the setup.sh script again. It will update the ChromeDriver to the version matching your browser version.

With Docker, you should in principle always get the matching version of ChromeDriver.

How can I pretty-print the JSON log output?¶

If you want to pretty-print the JSON log output, you can use the pino-pretty tool.

Our Docker image already supports pino-pretty out of the box. If you haven't installed it already, install it via npm:

npm install -g pino-pretty

Then pipe the output of Automator to the program, for example:

./surfmeter-automator-headless startStudy --studyId STUDY_YOUTUBE | pino-pretty