[🐛 Bug]: Selenium Manager - SE_BROWSER_MIRROR_URL/SE_DRIVER_MIRROR_URL don't suffice for downloading chrome binaries >= 115 from mirror

[daniel-stockhausen]

What happened?

DEBUG	Found chromedriver 119.0.6045.105 in PATH: /usr/bin/chromedriver
DEBUG	chrome detected at /usr/bin/google-chrome
DEBUG	Running command: /usr/bin/google-chrome --version
DEBUG	Output: "Google Chrome 119.0.6045.199 "
DEBUG	Detected browser: chrome 119.0.6045.199
DEBUG	Discovered chrome version (119) different to specified browser version (120)
DEBUG	Discovering versions from https://our.mirror/artifactory/chromedriver-meta-remote/chrome-for-testing/known-good-versions-with-downloads.json
DEBUG	Required browser: chrome 120.0.6082.0
DEBUG	Downloading chrome 120.0.6082.0 from https://edgedl.me.gvt1.com/edgedl/chrome/chrome-for-testing/120.0.6082.0/linux64/chrome-linux64.zip

The mirrored JSON files still include the original download URLs, which results in chrome-linux64.zip still being downloaded from the original URL.

Of course this is a general issue with chromelabs/chrome-for-testing mirrors, but there are solutions for it. For example node-chromedriver uses an additional ENV variable to handle this issue:

• CHROMEDRIVER_CDNURL is analog to SE_CHROMEDRIVER_MIRROR_URL
• CHROMEDRIVER_CDNBINARIESURL has no analog in Selenium Manager

node-chromedriver uses CHROMEDRIVER_CDNBINARIESURL to put together actual mirror download URLs: https://github.com/giggio/node-chromedriver/blob/main/install.js#L131

Am I wrong to assume that without such a variable in Selenium Manager we could only solve it by providing a mirror for known-good-versions-with-downloads.json (and the other -with-downloads.json files) which supplies the files with replaced download URLs?

Would be great if Selenium Manager would handle this issue like node-chromedriver does 🙂

How can we reproduce the issue?

Use SE_CHROME_MIRROR_URL with a mirror for the JSON files of https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/chrome-for-testing#json-api-endpoints

Relevant log output

DEBUG	Found chromedriver 119.0.6045.105 in PATH: /usr/bin/chromedriver
DEBUG	chrome detected at /usr/bin/google-chrome
DEBUG	Running command: /usr/bin/google-chrome --version
DEBUG	Output: "Google Chrome 119.0.6045.199 "
DEBUG	Detected browser: chrome 119.0.6045.199
DEBUG	Discovered chrome version (119) different to specified browser version (120)
DEBUG	Discovering versions from https://our.mirror/artifactory/chromedriver-meta-remote/chrome-for-testing/known-good-versions-with-downloads.json
DEBUG	Required browser: chrome 120.0.6082.0
DEBUG	Downloading chrome 120.0.6082.0 from https://edgedl.me.gvt1.com/edgedl/chrome/chrome-for-testing/120.0.6082.0/linux64/chrome-linux64.zip

Operating System

Ubuntu

Selenium version

Python webdriver-manager-4.0.1

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

At least all > 114

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

At least all > 114

Are you using Selenium Grid?

No response

[github-actions]

@daniel-stockhausen, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[titusfortner]

Let me make sure we're on the same page since some of the things here seem confusing.

1. What version of Selenium are you using?
2. Python webdriver-manager-4.0.1 is not part of Selenium and will get in the way of what Selenium is doing, please remove this for any code / logging you share
3. Selenium supports SE_DRIVER_MIRROR_URL and SE_BROWSER_MIRROR_URL environment variables (see details here: https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/selenium_manager/)
4. I raised as an issue a request to document a basic use case for what needs to be done to use it because I don't actually understand minimum requirements — [🚀 Feature]: Document custom Selenium Manager seleniumhq.github.io#1492 maybe you can help us make sure we have the right steps documented for this?

[daniel-stockhausen]

Thanks for the quick reply 🙂

1. What version of Selenium are you using?

python selenium 4.16.0

2. Python webdriver-manager-4.0.1 is not part of Selenium and will get in the way of what Selenium is doing, please remove this for any code / logging you share

You're correct, I removed it.

3. Selenium supports SE_DRIVER_MIRROR_URL and SE_BROWSER_MIRROR_URL environment variables (see details here: https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/selenium_manager/)

Yes, my original post was confusing: I wrote about chromedriver ENV vars but then posted log output of a browser download.

Explanation

• The issue is the same for chrome browser and chrome driver downloads.
• The issue is the same when using:
  • general mirror ENV vars SE_BROWSER_MIRROR_URL/SE_DRIVER_MIRROR_URL
  • chrome specific mirror ENV vars SE_CHROME_MIRROR_URL/SE_CHROMEDRIVER_MIRROR_URL

"Just" mirroring https://googlechromelabs.github.io/chrome-for-testing/known-good-versions-with-downloads.json generally can't work for downloading browsers/drivers from a mirror, because all these JSON files ending with with-downloads.json still contain the original download URLs:

https://edgedl.me.gvt1.com/edgedl/chrome/chrome-for-testing/122.0.6259.0/linux64/chrome-linux64.zip
https://edgedl.me.gvt1.com/edgedl/chrome/chrome-for-testing/122.0.6259.0/linux64/chromedriver-linux64.zip

Leading to Selenium Manager correctly using the mirror for fetching last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json but then still downloading from edgedl.me.gvt1.com:

DEBUG   Discovering versions from https://our.mirror.org/chrome-for-testing/last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json
DEBUG   Required browser: chrome 120.0.6099.109
DEBUG   Downloading chrome 120.0.6099.109 from https://edgedl.me.gvt1.com/edgedl/chrome/chrome-for-testing/120.0.6099.109/linux64/chrome-linux64.zip

As an example for a possible solution: node-chromedriver uses an additional ENV var CHROMEDRIVER_CDNBINARIESURL to put together download URLs that actually use a specified mirror: https://github.com/giggio/node-chromedriver/blob/120.0.2/install.js#L131

[titusfortner]

The idea is that you create your own "last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json" file with the download locations you want to use, and put its location in the environment variable.

That approach does seem like a lot of work but it is doable, it is much more flexible than requiring a specific "version/platform/name" format, and it is much easier for us to maintain toggling a URL.

[dongfangtianyu]

Selenium Manager 会正确地从镜像服务器获取last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json，然后根据json文件中的下载地址，下载具体的文件。

The Selenium Manager will correctly retrieve last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json from the mirror server and then download specific files based on the download URLs in the JSON file.

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所以，如果想要 Selenium Manager从指定的服务器下载文件，需要完成2个步骤：
Therefore, if you want Selenium Manager to download files from a specified server, you need to complete two steps:

1，在一个镜像服务器上提供last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json
1， Provide last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json on a mirror server.

2，修改last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json中的下载地址，下载地址也指向镜像服务器
2，Modify the download URLs in last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json; the download URLs should also point to the mirror server.

我已经这么做了，目前工作得很好。
I have already done this, and it is currently working well.

另外，根据实践经验，还应该同时镜像known-good-versions-with-downloads.json
Additionally, based on practical experience, it is advisable to mirror known-good-versions-with-downloads.json simultaneously.

[daniel-stockhausen]

Thank you both for the replies. We're gonna implement it like that on our end and it'll be fine - it just still feels like the implementation of this Selenium Manager feature is incomplete and the required search-and-replace of the binary URLs should just happen on-the-fly as part of Selenium Manager. Seems unnecessary to require everyone using this feature to setup such a "special" mirror - even if not complicated in and of itself it's just another thing to maintain on the user end. But oh well 🤷‍♂️

[titusfortner]

I agree it could be easier, but we're prioritizing other features.
Pull requests are always welcome!

I opened a new ticket to track the feature request.

[github-actions]

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