Protractor ERROR - Unable to start a WebDriver session

Question

I'm trying to run the plain vanilla Protractor example at http://angular.github.io/protractor/#/. I've done all the steps, but I get the errors below.

I have tried the solutions HERE and HERE with binary: "/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app" and binary: "/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome", and neither works

I'm not really sure what else I can configure; it just doesn't seem to work. Any idea as to what I can do to get it working?

EDIT I can see the status at http://localhost:4444/wd/hub, so not sure if the problem is with protractor config or with webdriver-manager.

Error in webdriver-manager:

Starting ChromeDriver 2.13.307650 (feffe1dd547ee7b5c16d38784cd0cd679dfd7850) on port 10276
Only local connections are allowed.
15:18:35.760 WARN - Exception thrown
java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
Build info: version: '2.44.0', revision: '76d78cf', time: '2014-10-23 20:02:37'
System info: host: 'localhost', ip: '127.0.0.1', os.name: 'Mac OS X', os.arch: 'x86_64', os.version: '10.9.5', java.version: '1.8.0_31'
Driver info: driver.version: unknown
  at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.report(FutureTask.java:122)
  at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:192)
  at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultSession.execute(DefaultSession.java:175)
  at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultSession.<init>(DefaultSession.java:111)
  at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultSession.createSession(DefaultSession.java:88)
  at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultDriverSessions.newSession(DefaultDriverSessions.java:108)
  at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.handler.NewSession.handle(NewSession.java:57)`

Error in protractor run:

Using the selenium server at http://localhost:4444/wd/hub
[launcher] Running 1 instances of WebDriver
ERROR - Unable to start a WebDriver session.
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/atoms/error.js:113
  var template = new Error(this.message);
                 ^
UnknownError: The process has not exited yet therefore no result is available ...
    at new bot.Error (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/atoms/error.js:113:18)
    at Object.bot.response.checkResponse (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/atoms/response.js:106:9)
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/webdriver.js:152:24
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/goog/base.js:1582:15
    at [object Object].webdriver.promise.ControlFlow.runInNewFrame_ (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:1654:20)
    at notify (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:465:12)
    at notifyAll (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:442:7)
    at resolve (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:420:7)
    at fulfill (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:535:5)
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/goog/base.js:1582:15
    at [object Object].webdriver.promise.ControlFlow.runInNewFrame_ (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:1654:20)
    at notify (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:465:12)
    at notifyAll (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:442:7)
    at resolve (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:420:7)
    at [object Object].fulfill (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:535:5)
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:721:49
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/http/http.js:96:5
    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/http/index.js:131:7)
    at IncomingMessage.emit (events.js:117:20)
    at _stream_readable.js:943:16
    at process._tickCallback (node.js:419:13)
==== async task ====
WebDriver.createSession()
    at Function.webdriver.WebDriver.acquireSession_ (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/webdriver.js:149:22)
    at Function.webdriver.WebDriver.createSession (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/webdriver.js:123:30)
    at [object Object].Builder.build (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/builder.js:294:22)
    at [object Object].DriverProvider.getNewDriver (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/lib/driverProviders/driverProvider.js:38:7)
    at [object Object].Runner.createBrowser (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/lib/runner.js:180:37)
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/lib/runner.js:246:21
    at _fulfilled (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:797:54)
    at self.promiseDispatch.done (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:826:30)
    at Promise.promise.promiseDispatch (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:759:13)
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:573:44
    at flush (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:108:17)
    at process._tickCallback (node.js:419:13)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:499:11)
    at startup (node.js:119:16)
    at node.js:906:3
[launcher] Process exited with error code 1`

Answer 1

I was able to narrow it down to a problem with finding/initializing Chrome by changing to Firefox instead:

exports.config = {
  seleniumAddress: 'http://localhost:4444/wd/hub',
  specs: ['spec.js'],
  capabilities: {
        'browserName': 'firefox'
  },
}

This configuration works fine and runs tests in FF.

With that I dug around until this thread: https://github.com/angular/protractor/issues/1424 and saw that chromedriver has compatibility issues now and then.

So I tried different versions found at http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html and ended up replacing the latest version (2.13) which was at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/selenium/chromedriver with an earlier version (2.9).

This solved it for me.

UPDATE

Looks like installing the newer Chromedriver version 2.15 could also solve this problem