unclecode / unclecode/crawl4ai

[Bug]: Post-navigation page operations have no timeout, and page cleanup is skipped on task cancellation — pages can leak and crawls can hang forever

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⚙️ In-progress 🐞 Bug
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Description

Summary

Found while investigating #2202 (Docker containers accumulating renderer processes for weeks). Two related defects in async_crawler_strategy.py make it possible for a crawl to hang indefinitely and for its page to never be closed.

1. Nothing after navigation has a timeout

page_timeout only bounds page.goto() (async_crawler_strategy.py:762-764). Every page interaction after navigation is an un-timed call into the page's JS engine:

  • overlay/consent removal — remove_overlay_elements (:1550)
  • body-visibility check, css_selector extraction (:1102), image-dimension updates
  • page.content() (:1115)
  • shadow-DOM flattening, iframe processing, user js_code

The adapter is a plain pass-through to page.evaluate (browser_adapter.py:61-65), which has no timeout in Playwright. The repo never calls set_default_timeout except inside if self.config.accept_downloads: (browser_manager.py:1215-1217) — and default timeouts would not cover evaluate anyway. Only scan_full_page is wrapped in asyncio.wait_for.

A page whose main thread goes busy after DOMContentLoaded (bad loop, broken ad script, hostile page) therefore hangs the crawl forever, holding its page (= one renderer process) open. Verified with a page that starts a busy loop right after DCL: navigation succeeds, then arun() never returns, far past page_timeout.

2. The page-closing finally doesn't survive cancellation

The cleanup block (async_crawler_strategy.py:1216-1231) guards with except Exception. asyncio.CancelledError is a BaseException, so a task cancelled during the first await in that block (release_page_with_context) propagates out and page.close() is never reached — the page and its context refcount leak. Reachable from dispatcher/stream teardown paths that cancel in-flight tasks.

Impact

In long-lived processes (the Docker server's browser pool, any SDK user reusing a crawler), leaked pages accumulate indefinitely. Combined with the launch flags that disable background throttling, each leaked page also burns CPU forever. This is the core mechanism behind the multi-week renderer accumulation in #2202.

Proposed fix

  • Wrap the post-navigation phase (or at minimum every evaluate/content() call) in asyncio.wait_for with a budget derived from page_timeout, so a crawl always terminates.
  • Make the cleanup finally cancellation-safe: catch BaseException (re-raising CancelledError after the page is closed) or shield the close.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start in async_crawler_strategy.py at the post-navigation operations and the cleanup finally block, then inspect browser_adapter.py and browser_manager.py for timeout behavior. Reproduce the busy-page hang and cancellation path described in the issue. Done means post-navigation work is bounded by page_timeout and cancelled tasks still close their pages.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
52/100

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