How do I run Selenium in Xvfb?
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
Solution 1:
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.
Solution 2:
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!
Solution 3:
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.
Solution 4:
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