Running Cypress on WSL

Question

I'm trying to run cypress on a WSL with Ubuntu, this is what I'm getting:

$ cypress run
[29023:1018/155130.159647:ERROR:bus.cc(392)] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
[29023:1018/155130.162020:ERROR:bus.cc(392)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")
[29023:1018/155130.162068:ERROR:bus.cc(392)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")
[29211:1018/155130.193707:ERROR:gpu_init.cc(441)] Passthrough is not supported, GL is swiftshader

...

[29023:1018/155132.292604:ERROR:bus.cc(392)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")

Timed out waiting for the browser to connect. Retrying...
[29023:1018/155232.249036:ERROR:bus.cc(392)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")

Timed out waiting for the browser to connect. Retrying again...
[29023:1018/155332.249372:ERROR:bus.cc(392)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")
 (-2) loading 'http://localhost:3000/__/#/tests/integration/simple.spec.ts'
Error:  (-2) loading 'http://localhost:3000/__/#/tests/integration/simple.spec.ts'
    at rejectAndCleanup (electron/js2c/browser_init.js:161:7486)
    at Object.failListener (electron/js2c/browser_init.js:161:7699)
    at Object.emit (events.js:376:20)

I couldn't find any related topics, any help?

Answer 1

Cypress requires the ability to run its GUI. Depending on your Windows version, you likely need some additional configuration in order to run GUI applications in WSL:

• For all Windows releases, make sure you install the required dependencies:

  apt-get install libgtk2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libgbm-dev libnotify-dev libgconf-2-4 libnss3 libxss1 libasound2 libxtst6 xauth xvfb
  

  This may have been done for you depending on how you installed Cypress. I used the npm directions in the Cypress doc.

• Windows 11 includes the WSLg feature by default, which allows you to run GUI applications directly on Windows. If you upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11, run wsl --update to make sure you have the latest WSL version with WSLg.

  Also make sure, if you've attempted to run an X server on an older release (like in the next suggestion), that you remove any manual configuration of DISPLAY in your startup files (e.g. ~/.bashrc, etc.).

• For Windows 10, you will need to do some additional configuration. There are really two ways to do this, but it's a better topic for Super User (since it isn't directly related to programming), so I'm going to point you to this Super User question for some details. Either answer there is fine. While I'm partial to my solution, most people opt for running a third-party X server as in harrymc's answer there.

Just to make sure there weren't any "hidden tricks" needed to get Cypress running, I can confirm that I was able to successfully ./node_modules/.bin/cypress open using the Cypress instructions and my xrdp technique from the Super User answer.

Answer 2

This error started popping up in our Azure Cypress pipeline as well. However, it started happening when we migrated to Cypress 8.6.0, which was the most recent version of Cypress when this was asked. Reverting back to 8.4.0 solved our problem.