Slow Chrome Launching

WebPageTest Private Instances
1

Hi,

I have a strange problem when I use Chrome browser on my local instance.
Often it takes around a minute to launch the browser. The agtent gets the job, but the little white window is just saying “Launching C:\program files …” after some time the browser starts and performe the test correctly. I have no problem with firefox and IE9.
The agent is running on a windows server 2008 rc2, and I have updated it with the newest from http://www.webpagetest.org/work/update/wptupdate.zip

If I start the test from the web gui, then it works sometime as expected, but if I start it from the api it always waits in the browser launching part.

Is it posible to get some kind of log to see what the wptdriver is doing?

My wptdriver.ini file:

[WebPagetest]
url=http://192.168.2.200/
location=A
browser=Firefox, Chrome, IE 9
;key=TestKey123
;Automatically install and update support software (Flash, Silverlight, etc)
;software=http://www.webpagetest.org/installers/software.dat

[Chrome]
exe=“C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe”
options=‘–load-extension=“%WPTDIR%\extension” --no-proxy-server’
;installer=http://www.webpagetest.org/installers/browsers/chrome.dat

[Firefox]
exe=“C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”
options=‘-profile “%PROFILE%” -no-remote’
;installer=http://www.webpagetest.org/installers/browsers/firefox.dat
template=firefox

[IE 9]
exe=“%PROGRAM_FILES%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”

Thanks

2

The web GUI actually uses the API so that shouldn’t impact the time it takes to launch (unless there is something about the way you are calling the location from the API that is actually triggering a different browser or something like that).

In the [WebPagetest] section of your ini, browser should be set to just one of the browsers (that is defining the default browser to use if one was not specified).

On your API calls you should be passing &location=A:Chrome

You also need to specify the profile directory as part of the chrome command line or chrome will not correctly start with a cleared cache. It really does need to look like the sample unless you are using a proxy:

options=‘–load-extension=“%WPTDIR%\extension” --user-data-dir=“%PROFILE%” --no-proxy-server’

3

Hi Patrick,

Thank you for your reply.

I have removed the two browsers in the [WebPagetest] section, and changed the options line back to the original. I removed the --user-data-dir because I got an error when Chrome started, but it seems not to be an issue in windows 7.

I pass the “&location=A:Chrome” in the request, but unfortunately I still have the problem with the slow start. After some monitoring I can see it is not every time it hangs, but I can not see a pattern so far.