Working With Dual Chromium

There are only two Browser Synthetics test types that rely on Chromium at this time: page load tests and transaction tests. The dual Chromium option mostly applies to transaction tests that use scripting to emulate complex user journeys. However, we recommend evaluating page load tests as well.

You’ll have to re-evaluate every 3 months or so, when ThousandEyes pushes out an agent software upgrade with a new version of Chromium. These upgrades are announced in the Changelog and also on the Chromium Update History page.

Evaluating Your Tests

To evaluate your tests, you can designate a single Enterprise Agent as your “canary” enabled with the Dual Chromium option, preferably an agent that’s used for your transaction tests already.

To do a quick preliminary check, you can run your test script in the Recorder IDE with the newer option selected, and then verify your test by running it on an agent.

To verify how a particular test will run on an agent with Dual Chromium enabled:

  1. Duplicate your test.

  2. In the test copy, remove all agents except for one Cloud or Enterprise Agent that’s set to the Dual Chromium option.

  3. Change the test configuration’s Browser Options to use the newer version of Chromium.

  4. Run an instant test.

If a Test Starts Failing After a Chromium Upgrade

If one of your transaction tests is failing when it used to work, and this happens immediately after ThousandEyes pushes out an agent software upgrade with a new version of Chromium, it could also be that your test target has altered, but start with the most obvious. A quick checklist would be:

  1. The test must have a browser Chromium option set to Newer when available, while the agent it ran on must have BrowserBot Package Type set to Dual Chromium Version option.

  2. This same test runs on other agents successfully when those agents are NOT set to dual.

  3. The Table tab for this test view shows a newer Chromium version being used.

If one of your tests works on the previous (default) Chromium version, but not on the newer one, contact ThousandEyes Customer Support, who can help guide you through troubleshooting your test.

Seeing the Chromium Version in Test Views

The test views show the Chromium version used for each Cloud or Enterprise Agent within a particular test. You can see this in Views 2.0 under the Table tab view for page load or transaction test views.

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