I'm on EC2 instance. So there is no GUI.
$pip install selenium
$sudo apt-get install firefox xvfb
Then I do this:
$Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1024x768x24 2>&1 >/dev/null &
$DISPLAY=:1 java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.0b3.jar
05:08:31.227 INFO - Java: Sun Microsystems Inc. 19.0-b09
05:08:31.229 INFO - OS: Linux 2.6.32-305-ec2 i386
05:08:31.233 INFO - v2.0 [b3], with Core v2.0 [b3]
05:08:32.121 INFO - RemoteWebDriver instances should connect to: http://127.0.0.1:4444/wd/hub
05:08:32.122 INFO - Version Jetty/5.1.x
05:08:32.123 INFO - Started HttpContext[/selenium-server/driver,/selenium-server/driver]
05:08:32.124 INFO - Started HttpContext[/selenium-server,/selenium-server]
05:08:32.124 INFO - Started HttpContext[/,/]
05:08:32.291 INFO - Started org.openqa.jetty.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler@1186fab
05:08:32.292 INFO - Started HttpContext[/wd,/wd]
05:08:32.295 INFO - Started SocketListener on 0.0.0.0:4444
05:08:32.295 INFO - Started org.openqa.jetty.jetty.Server@1ffb8dc
Great, everything should work now, right?
When I run my code:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get("http://www.yahoo.com")
I get this:
Error: cannot open display: :0
open a terminal and run this command xhost +. This commands needs to be run every time you restart your machine. If everything works fine may be you can add this to startup commands
Also make sure in your /etc/environment file there is a line
export DISPLAY=:0.0
And then, run your tests to see if your issue is resolved.
All please note the comment from sardathrion below before using this.
You can use PyVirtualDisplay (a Python wrapper for Xvfb) to run headless WebDriver tests.
#!/usr/bin/env python
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
from selenium import webdriver
display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
display.start()
# now Firefox will run in a virtual display.
# you will not see the browser.
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get('http://www.google.com')
print browser.title
browser.quit()
display.stop()
more info
You can also use xvfbwrapper, which is a similar module (but has no external dependencies):
from xvfbwrapper import Xvfb
vdisplay = Xvfb()
vdisplay.start()
# launch stuff inside virtual display here
vdisplay.stop()
or better yet, use it as a context manager:
from xvfbwrapper import Xvfb
with Xvfb() as xvfb:
# launch stuff inside virtual display here.
# It starts/stops in this code block.
The easiest way is probably to use xvfb-run:
DISPLAY=:1 xvfb-run java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.0b3.jar
xvfb-run does the whole X authority dance for you, give it a try!
This is the setup I use:
Before running the tests, execute:
export DISPLAY=:99
/etc/init.d/xvfb start
And after the tests:
/etc/init.d/xvfb stop
The init.d file I use looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
XVFB=/usr/bin/Xvfb
XVFBARGS="$DISPLAY -ac -screen 0 1024x768x16"
PIDFILE=${HOME}/xvfb_${DISPLAY:1}.pid
case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting virtual X frame buffer: Xvfb"
/sbin/start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --make-pidfile --background --exec $XVFB -- $XVFBARGS
echo "."
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping virtual X frame buffer: Xvfb"
/sbin/start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE
echo "."
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/xvfb {start|stop|restart}"
exit 1
esac
exit 0
If you use Maven, you can use xvfb-maven-plugin to start xvfb before tests, run them using related DISPLAY environment variable, and stop xvfb after all.
