I’m using Selenium in Python to scrape a lot of web pages on a daily basis and found it was leaving instances of Edge open in /tmp/ which eventually filled my linux drive space.
The folders left in /tmp/ look like that:-

/tmp/.com.microsoft.Edge.BX4XtO/

This is the code I’m using:-

import time
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

def scrape_page(web_address):
   try:
      edge_options = webdriver.EdgeOptions()
      edge_options.use_chromium = True
      edge_options.add_argument('--remote-debugging-port=0')
      edge_options.add_argument('--no-first-run')
      edge_options.add_argument('--no-default-browser-check')
      edge_options.add_argument('--headless=new')
      edge_options.add_argument('--log-level=3')
      edge_options.add_argument("--disable-logging")
      edge_options.add_argument('--start-maximized') 
      edge_options.add_argument('--disable-infobars') 
      edge_options.add_experimental_option('excludeSwitches', ['disable-popup-blocking'])
        
      # Creates 3x .com.microsoft.Edge. in /tmp/
      driver = webdriver.Edge(options = edge_options)

      driver.get(web_address)
      time.sleep(3)
      response = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "/html/body").text
   except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:  # This is the correct syntax
      print(e)
      logging.warning('Scraping {0} failed - {1}'.format(web_address, e))
      return
   finally:
      driver.close()
      driver.quit()
   return response

What I’ve found is that when the following command runs:-

driver = webdriver.Edge(options = edge_options)

it creates three instances of Edge in /tmp/:-

.com.microsoft.Edge.bZsnHM/ .com.microsoft.Edge.tZLIcy/ .com.microsoft.Edge.wPEEWf/

After the quit() command only two of the instances are closed leaving one:-

.com.microsoft.Edge.bZsnHM/

Which is the last instance that

driver = webdriver.Edge(options = edge_options)

creates out of the three. I was able to confirm this by monitoring the /tmp/ folder.

This raises a few questions:-

Firstly, should Selenium be opening 3 instances?

Secondly, why doesn’t quit() close all the Edge instances?

Thirdly, how do I remove all the instances?

For some additional info, the exact thing occcurs when I use Chrome instead of Edge.

Thanks for your help and time ????.