unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally (Driver info: chromedriver=2.9

I finally managed to get Selenium tests starting the Chrome Driver on my laptop (server).

The important bit is to use Xvfb. Don't ask me why but once you accept this fact follow these steps (more detailed than @Anon answer)

• In you Jenkins settings add a global property

  key : DISPLAYvalue:0:0

• On your server start Xvfb in the background:

   Xvfb :0 -ac -screen 0 1024x768x24 &

Are you passing the DISPLAY parameter to your Jenkins job?

I assume you are trying to execute the tests in headless mode, too. So setup some x service (i.e. Xvfb) and pass the DISPLAY number to your job. Worked for me.

I was trying to run selenium on Jenkins with Mocha framework using wdio. So following are the steps to solve this issue:-

Install google chrome

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

Install chrome-driver

wget http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/2.23/chromedriver_linux64.zipunzip chromedriver_linux64.zip

Run following commands to start selenium web server

nohup sudo Xvfb :10 -acexport DISPLAY=:10java -jar vendor/se/selenium-server-standalone/bin/selenium-server-standalone.jar -Dwebdriver.chrome.bin="/usr/bin/google-chrome" -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver="vendor/bin/chromedriver"

After this start you tests with wdio command

wdio wdio.conf.js