ChromeDriver: 'DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist' error

Question

I'm running Codeception tests in our Pipeline using Google Chrome and ChromeDriver on Linux.

When I was using for this Chrome version installed from the downloaded .deb package, it was working fine, but had to switch to Chrome for Testing due to Chrome and ChromeDriver versions mismatch and I can't no longer initiate the tests.

I'm using Chrome for Testing from here (from here https://googlechromelabs.github.io/chrome-for-testing/) and I extracted the files to the /tmp/chrome/chrome-linux64/ path, then moved them to /opt/google/chrome/ and made a link to the path /usr/bin/google-chrome (probably worth noting I'm using our custom Docker image for this):

ln -s /opt/google/chrome/chrome /usr/bin/google-chrome

After trying many solutions I'm still stuck with this error for every Codeception test:

[Facebook\WebDriver\Exception\SessionNotCreatedException] session not created: Chrome failed to start: exited normally.

(session not created: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)

(The process started from chrome location /usr/bin/google-chrome is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)

I tried changing Chrome options, I've fixed all dbus errors I was getting earlier and I ran Chrome outside of the Codeception instance and it worked fine. Right now my testing suite code looks like this:

[...]
        modules:
            enabled:
                - WebDriver:
                    url: http://127.0.0.1/index.php
                    port: 9515
                    os: linux
                    browser: chrome
                    capabilities:
                        acceptInsecureCerts: true
                        platformName: "linux"
                        chromeOptions:
                            args: ["--no-sandbox",
                                   "--headless=new",
                                   "--disable-gpu",
                                   "--window-size=1920,1080",
                                   "--start-maximized",
                                   "--disable-extensions",
                                   "--proxy-server='direct://'",
                                   "--proxy-bypass-list=*",                                   
                                   "--disable-dev-shm-usage",              
                                   "--ignore-certificate-errors",
                                   "--remote-allow-origins=*"]
                            binary: "/usr/bin/google-chrome"
[...]

I run the ChromeDriver in the background using this command (it never actually changed and still works fine):

nohup /usr/bin/chromedriver --url-base=wd/hub &

I also checked the ps aux command after unsuccessful tests and noticed that Chrome left many CrashPad processes:

root        1167  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1173  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1175  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1181  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1183  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1189  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1191  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1197  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1199  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1205  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>

root        1207  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    13:17   0:00 [chrome_crashpad] <defunct>