answer re: How can we use Selenium Webdriver in colab.research.google.com?

Jan 7 '19

124

Recently Google collab was upgraded and since Ubuntu 20.04+ no longer distributes chromium-browser outside of a snap package, you can install a compatible version from the Debian buster repository:

%%shell
# Ubuntu no longer distributes chromium-browser outside of snap
#
# Proposed solution: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1204571/how-to-install-chromium-without-snap
# Add debian buster
cat >

…

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Recently Google collab was upgraded and since Ubuntu 20.04+ no longer distributes chromium-browser outside of a snap package, you can install a compatible version from the Debian buster repository:

%%shell

Ubuntu no longer distributes chromium-browser outside of snap

Proposed solution: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1204571/how-to-install-chromium-without-snap

Add debian buster

cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list <<'EOF'
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/debian-buster.gpg] http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/debian-buster-updates.gpg] http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/debian-security-buster.gpg] http://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main
EOF

Add keys

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys DCC9EFBF77E11517
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 648ACFD622F3D138
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 112695A0E562B32A

apt-key export 77E11517 | gpg --dearmour -o /usr/share/keyrings/debian-buster.gpg
apt-key export 22F3D138 | gpg --dearmour -o /usr/share/keyrings/debian-buster-updates.gpg
apt-key export E562B32A | gpg --dearmour -o /usr/share/keyrings/debian-security-buster.gpg

Prefer debian repo for chromium* packages only

Note the double-blank lines between entries

cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/chromium.pref << 'EOF'
Package: *
Pin: release a=eoan
Pin-Priority: 500

Package: *
Pin: origin "deb.debian.org"
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: chromium*
Pin: origin "deb.debian.org"
Pin-Priority: 700
EOF

Install chromium and chromium-driver

apt-get update
apt-get install chromium chromium-driver

Install selenium

pip install selenium
Then you can run selenium like this:

from selenium import webdriver
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
chrome_options.headless = True
wd = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver',options=chrome_options)
wd.get("https://www.webite-url.com")