Save state

[thejohnha]

Is there a way to save browser state between container restarts? TIA!

[MRColorR]

Hello, and thank you for reaching out.

Presently, it is not possible to snapshot the state of a running container to preserve the state of the active browser process.

If you have any ideas on how to achieve this for a running container, please feel free to explain them here or create a pull request.

The only way to save data is by attaching a virtual Disk to the data, Most likely the path of /root/.config/google-chrome, /root/.local/, and /root/.cache/

[hairlesshacker]

This is as simple as adding a volume in docker.. For example, in docker compose, add the following config:

    volumes:
      - ./chrome-data:/root/.config/chromium/Default

This will mount the chrome data on the docker host, so it keeps it's state between restarts

[thejohnha]

Saving firefox state seems pretty easy by adding docker volume for root/.mozilla but chromium seems much harder.

I've tried saving /root/.cache and /root/.config (as well as .config/chromium and .config/Default) but the browser doesn't start properly, always dying with chromium (exit status 21; not expected) and chromium entered FATAL state, too many start retries too quickly until I delete those folders and then it starts again.

To be clear, the browser starts the first time, but then subsequent starts fail.

/var/log/chromium.err.log yields these messages:

Unable to show message box: Chromium - The profile appears to be in use by another Chromium process (391) on another computer (33882bf02fa2). Chromium has locked the profile so that it doesn't get corrupted. If you are sure no other processes are using this profile, you can unlock the profile and relaunch Chromium.
The profile appears to be in use by another Chromium process (391) on another computer (33882bf02fa2). Chromium has locked the profile so that it doesn't get corrupted. If you are sure no other processes are using this profile, you can unlock the profile and relaunch Chromium.

So manually deleting /root/.config/chromium/SingletonLock works and I can get chromium to start again.

But trying to automate this with CUSTOMIZE=true and a simple script to rm that file in /app/custom_entrypoints_scripts goes into a container bootloop.

Any ideas on how I could delete that process lock file?