How to fix Puppetteer ‘Running as root without –no-sandbox is not supported’

Problem:

When you try to run your puppetteer application, e.g. under docker, you see this error message:

Solution:

Note: Unless you are running in a Docker or similar container, first consider running the application as non-root-user!

You have to pass the --no-sandbox option to puppeteer.launch():

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    headless: true,
    args: ['--no-sandbox']
});

We recommend to use this slightly more complex solution to pass it only if the process is being run as root:

/**
 * Return true if the current process is run by the root user
 * https://techoverflow.net/2019/11/07/how-to-check-if-nodejs-is-run-by-root/
 */
function isCurrentUserRoot() {
   return process.getuid() == 0; // UID 0 is always root
}

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    headless: true,
    args: isCurrentUserRoot() ? ['--no-sandbox'] : undefined
});

This ensures Chromium is run in the most secure mode possible with the current user.