[🐛 Bug]: Trying to install Safari on linux as root removes `/usr/bin`

[rijenkii]

Description

Was trying to see what would happen, instead of a simple "why are you doing this" spent two hours restoring my system.

Reproduction

1. Install a Fedora 42 Server on a VM (DO NOT DO THIS ON YOUR OWN MACHINE)
2. mkdir venv && python3 -m venv venv
3. venv/bin/pip install selenium
4. sudo venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/linux/selenium-manager --browser safari
5. Try running ls

Logs

After running the reproduction you will see the following message:

-bash: ls: command not found

[selenium-ci]

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

Selenium Triage Team: remember to follow the Triage Guide

[rijenkii]

Realized that this can also be reproduced in a docker container, steps:

1. docker run --rm -it fedora
2. dnf install -y python3-pip
3. pip install selenium
4. /usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/linux/selenium-manager --browser safari

5. [root@c25315bdf15c /]# ls -la
   bash: ls: command not found
   [root@c25315bdf15c /]# bash
   bash: bash: command not found
   [root@c25315bdf15c /]# /bin/bash
   bash: /bin/bash: No such file or directory
   

[diemol]

@bonigarcia do you know why this might be?

[rijenkii]

Trace:

[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z TRACE] Reading metadata from /root/.cache/selenium/se-metadata.json
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z TRACE] Metadata file does not exist. Creating a new one
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z DEBUG] Sending stats to Plausible: Props { browser: "safari", browser_version: "", os: "linux", arch: "x86_64", lang: "", selenium_version: "4.32" }
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z TRACE] Writing metadata to /root/.cache/selenium/se-metadata.json
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z TRACE] Checking safari in PATH
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z DEBUG] safari not found in PATH
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z DEBUG] safari not found in the system
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z DEBUG] Required driver: safaridriver (local)
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z DEBUG] Acquiring lock: /usr/bin/sm.lock
[2025-05-22T10:05:09.869Z ERROR] safaridriver not available for download

When trying to install firefox line Acquiring lock looks like this instead:

[2025-05-22T10:07:46.649Z DEBUG] Acquiring lock: /root/.cache/selenium/firefox/linux64/138.0.4/sm.lock

So possibly an oopsie happens somewhere around that.

[navin772]

I think we shouldn't allow selenium manager to proceed when browser is safari and its being run on a non-macOS system. This way we can skip problems like these.
I can open a PR which adds this check if we agree upon this.

[diemol]

Yeah, we should check that but we should also see why the whole /usr/bin is gone and fix that.

[bonigarcia]

Thanks a lot for reporting, @rijenkii, and sorry for the inconvenience.

Indeed, this is a rare bug that should not happen. It is caused by Selenium Manager trying to download safaridriver (which should not happen) and then a bad cleanup in the parent folder of the theoretical target path (which executed as root caused the problem).

I have just fixed this issue in the trunk branch. It should be available for the next Selenium release.