I'm just trying to do something very basic on my Mac using selenium and I can't even open a webpage. I'm getting an error of :
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/godsinred/Desktop/InstagramLiker/GmailAccountGenerator.py", line 10, in <module>
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/chrome/webdriver.py", line 68, in __init__
self.service.start()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py", line 88, in start
os.path.basename(self.path), self.start_error_message)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'chromedriver' executable may have wrong permissions. Please see https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home
Here is my code below:
from selenium import webdriver
import time
link = "https://accounts.google.com"
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get(link)
time.sleep(5)
driver.quit()
The error says it all :
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'chromedriver' executable may have wrong permissions. Please see https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home
The error clearly mentions that the chromedriver which is getting detected have wrong permissions.
Solution
- Download the latest chromedriver binary from ChromeDriver - WebDriver for Chrome and save it in your system.
- Ensure that chromedriver binary have the required permissions.
While initiating the WebDriver and WebClient pass the argument executable_path along with the absolute path of the chromedriver binary as follows :
from selenium import webdriver
link = "https://accounts.google.com"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='/path/to/chromedriver')
driver.get(link)
Reference
You can find a detailed relevant discussion in:
- 'Webdrivers' executable may have wrong permissions. Please see https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home
Most answers here and in other related posts suggest users to just move the file to /usr/bin
and they work fine if you are just running chromedriver
locally and normally.
However, if you are compiling Python scripts into executables using compilers such as cx_freeze
, you may not be able to afford the luxury if your program always uses a relative link to chromedriver
.
As the error message suggests, your compiled program does not have the permissions to manipulate chromedriver
. To use a relative link to chromedriver
on a Mac in your compiled Python program, you can programmatically change the permission of chromedriver
in your Python script using:
import os
os.chmod('/path/to/chromedriver', 0755) # e.g. os.chmod('/Users/user/Documents/my_project/chromedriver', 0755)
You can test this by doing the following:
cd
to your working directory
$ chmod 755 chromedriver
to allow your program to manipulate it
P.S. 755
is the default numerical permission for files in usr/bin
. 664
is the default numerical permission for files in other normal folders (probably your working directory). Thus, when chromedriver
complains it does not have the correct permission, you need to grant it a numerical permission equivalent to or greater than 755
.
This worked! I followed these instructions to update PATH: https://www.kenst.com/2015/03/installing-chromedriver-on-mac-osx/
I dragged my chromedriver.exe from Finder into Terminal (/etc/paths), and then copied the address in Terminal and dropped it into my Python IDE where the PATH should be inserted.