Playwright is unable to launch chrome on Alpine Docker

I am getting the following error when running scrapper (nodejs application) on node:lts-alpine in docker.

INFO  PlaywrightCrawler: Starting the crawl
WARN  PlaywrightCrawler: Reclaiming failed request back to the list or queue. browserType.launchPersistentContext: Failed to launch: Error: spawn /root/.cache/ms-playwright/chromium-1060/chrome-linux/chrome ENOENT
=========================== logs ===========================
<launching> /root/.cache/ms-playwright/chromium-1060/chrome-linux/chrome --disable-field-trial-config --disable-background-networking --enable-features=NetworkService,NetworkServiceInProcess --disable-background-timer-throttling --disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows --disable-back-forward-cache --disable-breakpad --disable-client-side-phishing-detection --disable-component-extensions-with-background-pages --disable-component-update --no-default-browser-check --disable-default-apps --disable-dev-shm-usage --disable-extensions --disable-features=ImprovedCookieControls,LazyFrameLoading,GlobalMediaControls,DestroyProfileOnBrowserClose,MediaRouter,DialMediaRouteProvider,AcceptCHFrame,AutoExpandDetailsElement,CertificateTransparencyComponentUpdater,AvoidUnnecessaryBeforeUnloadCheckSync,Translate --allow-pre-commit-input --disable-hang-monitor --disable-ipc-flooding-protection --disable-popup-blocking --disable-prompt-on-repost --disable-renderer-backgrounding --force-color-profile=srgb --metrics-recording-only --no-first-run --enable-automation --password-store=basic --use-mock-keychain --no-service-autorun --export-tagged-pdf --headless --hide-scrollbars --mute-audio --blink-settings=primaryHoverType=2,availableHoverTypes=2,primaryPointerType=4,availablePointerTypes=4 --no-sandbox --proxy-server=http://127.0.0.1:43519 --proxy-bypass-list=<-loopback> --disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled --user-data-dir=/tmp/playwright_chromiumdev_profile-oKPLgl --remote-debugging-pipe about:blank
[pid=N/A] starting temporary directories cleanup
[pid=N/A] finished temporary directories cleanup
============================================================
 {"id":"Gl0EwOcnElHCOkr","url":"https://labs.withgoogle.com/","retryCount":1}

Here is my code:

const scrapeWebsiteUsingApify = async (source) => {
  const { Actor } = Apify;
  const { PlaywrightCrawler } = Crawlee;
  try {
    const sourceKey = source.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/g, '');
    await Actor.init();
    const store = await Actor.openKeyValueStore();

    // Check if data for the given source URL exists in the store
    const record = await store.getValue(sourceKey);
    if (record) {
      // If data exists in the store, return it directly
      return record;
    }

    // If data does not exist in the store, scrape the website
    let content;
    const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
      async requestHandler({ page }) {
        await page.waitForTimeout(3000);
        // Return the data as a result
        content = await page.content();
      },
    });

    const crawledInfo = await crawler.run([source]);
    // Store the scraped data in the key-value store for future use
    await store.setValue(sourceKey, { ...crawledInfo, content });
    return { ...crawledInfo, content };
  } catch (e) {
    return null;
  }
};

The code works fine on my M1 macbook pro, but on deployment it fails to launch chrome. I verified the location

/root/.cache/ms-playwright/chromium-1060/chrome-linux/chrome

It has the chrome file with the following permissions,

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 372244488 May 10 13:45 chrome

It is quite clear from the error that it's not able to locate the file so checked the $PATH as well and tried adding the path of the chrome to it, but even that doesn't seem to work.

Can you help me understand the error and a possible fix would be much appreciated.

Playwright doesn't work with that image out of the box.

Related Playwright issue: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/2826

The error you observe is because of missing dependencies. You can check that by logging in to container and running ldd /root/.cache/ms-playwright/chromium-1060/chrome-linux/chrome.

Playwright has 'install-dependencies' command to fix this issue, but it works with apt-get which is not available in alpine (alpine uses apk).

There are also docker images from playwright team as well as there is alpine-chrome image that works by installing chrome specifically over alpine image.

You should use the dedicated images from Apify - https://github.com/apify/actor-templates/blob/master/templates/js-crawlee-playwright-chrome/.actor/Dockerfile