[chromium-discuss] Re-using Chromium cache across multiple virtual machines

[Marcus Greenwood]

We're using Chromium (v70) for web automation across a Kubernetes cluster
of 100-1000 "worker" containers. Currently we're using a clean browser
session to avoid cookies/local storage etc cross-contaminating browser
sessions. However, we'd like to take advantage of the browser cache in
order to improve automation performance. Ideally this cache would somehow
be shared across the containers.

We've found that it is possible to copy the contents of cache from one
container to another and this works as long as Chromium is closed when the
cache is copied. Upon restarting the browser it loads the cache from the
copied files as expected. This solution technically works but is a bit of a
hack and sub-optimal since closing and re-opening the browser takes time.

Having reviewed the Chromium source code, it would appear that the cache
index is retained in memory and points to the (hashed) urls which are
stored in the cache. Is there any way to force Chromium to reload the cache
index from disk without closing the browser?

Thanks