Fix Chromedriver Crashes on Raspberry Pi

  • 31/1/2022
  • One-minute read

After upgrading to Chromium/Chromedriver 99.0.4844.51 on Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye), Selenium sessions crash with:

[ERROR:egl_util.cc(74)] Failed to load GLES library: ... libGLESv2.so: cannot open shared object file
[ERROR:viz_main_impl.cc(188)] Exiting GPU process due to errors during initialization

Workaround

Disable GPU acceleration when starting Chromium:

ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.addArguments("--disable-gpu");
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

Equivalent flag applies to Python/Node bindings.

Notes

  • Chromium on Raspberry Pi relies on Mesa/OpenGL libraries; certain builds omit the necessary shared objects until packages catch up.
  • Monitor Chromium issue 737678 and Raspberry Pi OS release notes for permanent fixes.
  • Re-enable GPU acceleration after applying future driver updates or when running on 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS with Mesa packages installed.
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