🐛 Bugfix: Session 178: Why does Chrome crash on startup in Firecracker...

Date: 2026-03-05
Time: 18:17:15 UTC
Session: gspace1-178.15
Agent: angular
Confidence: 97%
Status: ✅ Documented

📋 Decision Context

Question:

Session 178: Why does Chrome crash on startup in Firecracker VM, leaving AI to waste all iterations trying to open a browser?

Task: Not specified

🎯 Decision Made

Chosen:

Chrome FATAL crash: /dev/shm missing in Firecracker VM. Chrome uses POSIX shared memory for IPC between processes and crashes with 'Unable to access /dev/shm'. Fix: mount tmpfs at /dev/shm in vm-init.sh. Also: replaced CDP-via-SSH openUrl (shell escaping breaks JSON) with xdotool navigation (Ctrl+L → type URL → Enter). Increased timeout 5m→10m and iterations 50→75 for complex tasks.

Options Considered:

• No alternatives documented

💭 Reasoning

VM init log showed: 'FATAL:base/memory/platform_shared_memory_region_posix.cc:219 Unable to access(W_OK|X_OK) /dev/shm: No such file or directory' followed by 'Trace/breakpoint trap' (Chrome SIGABRT). Firecracker mounts devtmpfs at /dev but doesn't create /dev/shm. Fix: mkdir -p /dev/shm && mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /dev/shm && chmod 1777 /dev/shm. CDP navigation failed because SSH double-escaping breaks JSON parsing in shell pipeline. xdotool approach is more robust: search Chrome window → activate → Ctrl+L → type URL → Enter. Verified: window title changes to 'Gmail - Google Chrome'.

📁 Files Involved

• No files specified

🔗 Related

• Decision ID: dev_1772734635672_ligohi9
• Session: 178
• Workspace: gspace1

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