Issue running testcafe with electron in a headless container

Question

I am trying to run testcafe with the testcafe-browser-provider-electron in headless mode on a debian docker container.

I keep getting

testcafe:browser-provider-electron:spawn:stderr [122:0520/185130.933152:FATAL:atom_main_delegate.cc(211)] Running as root without --no-sandbox is not supported. 
See https://crbug.com/63818ERROR Was unable to open the browser "electron:./app" due to error.

I have tried running in npx as well as via locally installed testcafe.

Dockerfile

FROM node:13.4.0-buster AS builder

ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive

# Python dependencies in some npm modules
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y -q curl && \
    apt-get install -y xvfb x11-xkb-utils xfonts-100dpi \
    xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable xfonts-cyrillic x11-apps clang \
    libdbus-1-dev libgtk2.0-dev libnotify-dev \
    libgconf2-dev libasound2-dev libcap-dev libcups2-dev libxtst-dev \
    libxss1 libnss3-dev gcc-multilib g++-multilib && \
    apt-get remove -y cmdtest

RUN curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | apt-key add - && \
    echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list && \
    apt-get update

RUN apt-get install yarn git git-lfs -y && \
    apt-get install --fix-missing -y xvfb

# Create directory for the application
WORKDIR /app

.... Load my stuff

# Docker base image is already NODE_ENV=production
RUN npm i -g testcafe && \
    yarn

# Build the tests
RUN yarn build-e2e
RUN export NODE_ENV=development && \
    export DEBUG=testcafe:*,electron:* && \
    xvfb-run -e /dev/stdout -s '-screen 0 1024x768x24' testcafe electron:./app

I upgraded to the latest testcafe npm modules as well

    "testcafe": "^1.8.5",
    "testcafe-browser-provider-electron": "^0.0.15-alpha.1",
    "testcafe-live":"^0.1.4",
    "testcafe-react-selectors": "^4.0.0",

.testcaferc.json

{
  "src": "./test/e2e/*.js",
  "reporter": {
    "name": "xunit",
    "output": "./reports/report.xml"
  },
  "screenshots": {
    "takeOnFails": true,
    "path": "./test/e2e/screenshots"
  }
}

.tstcafe-electron-rc.json

{
  "mainWindowUrl": "./app/app.html",
  "appPath": "./app"
}

It all works fine without headless.

I have tried to insert --no-sandbox into the mix in several spots, with and without xvfb as well.

Answer 1

This error means that you are trying to run the chrome:headless under the root account.  Try to add the "appArgs": "--no-sandbox" option into the .testcafe-electron-rc.json file. 

As an alternate way, you can add a non-root user into the container and switch to it before running tests:  https://github.com/DevExpress/testcafe/blob/fc3fe6d527df9b72831133134fb800729f7d3741/docker/Dockerfile#L23