chrome_crashpad_handler: --database is required

[hvillero]

This error occurred when trying to initialize Chromium in AWS ECS Fargate containers:

Browser did not produce websocket url within 60 seconds, try to increase ':process_timeout'

The underlying cause revealed through diagnostic logging was:

chrome_crashpad_handler: --database is required
Try 'chrome_crashpad_handler --help' for more information.

Root Cause:
Chromium's crash reporting system (Crashpad) requires write access to specific directories to create crash databases. In ECS Fargate's restricted container environment, the crash handler was unable to access default system directories, which prevented browser initialization.

Solution we found:
Added environment variables to the Dockerfile to direct Chromium's crash handler to writable directories:

ENV XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/tmp/.chromium
ENV XDG_CACHE_HOME=/tmp/.chromium

Key Finding
The issue was specific to containerized environments with restricted file system access (like ECS Fargate) and became more prominent with recent Chromium versions that made the --database flag mandatory for crash reporting. The solution allows Chromium's crash reporting to function normally rather than trying to disable it entirely.

[Dinesh100K]

Hi @hvillero, thanks for sharing this. We were also facing the same issue and couldn’t figure out the cause, but the changes you suggested resolved it.