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Thierry Lam
Asked: 2010-02-03 08:05:27 +0800 CST

How can I run Selenium tests on an Ubuntu server?

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I currently have a test machine running Ubuntu server 9.10 with no GUI. I want to run my Selenium RC test suites which open Firefox and perform a series of operation. I could bloat my test server with Gnome or KDE to run those tests but I'm looking for a lighter solution. Does anyone have some suggestions on how to run GUI tests on an Ubuntu server?

ubuntu selenium

2 Answers

  1. Try this for automating headless server stuff. (Caveat, I wrote the post below)

    http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/headless-wrapper-for-ephemeral-xservers.html

    Basic summary is I made a script to run any command within a newly-created headless X server. This also lets you run lots of headless X servers at a time if you need to.

    So for starting selenium-rc in a new headless X server, you would do (using the tool described in the above post)

    sh ephemeral-x.sh -x "Xvfb -ac -screen 0 1024x768x24" java -jar selenium-server.jar ...
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  2. i haven't tested it by myself, but this sounds promising:
    http://www.alittlemadness.com/2008/03/05/running-selenium-headless/

    i will try this for myself.

    EDIT:
    finally i had time to test for myself. i tested it on suse, but should be the same for ubuntu, except perhaps package and path names.

    first install xvfb package, on suse it is called xorg-x11-Xvfb

    start xvfb in background with display, screen and resolution parameters:
    /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvfb :15 -ac -screen 0 1024x768x8 &

    change your display settings:
    export DISPLAY=localhost:15.0

    and start your selenium rc:
    /opt/java/bin/java -jar selenium-server.jar > /var/log/se_rc_server.log 2>&1 &

    you could also start selenium rc with a testsuite specified:
    /opt/java/bin/java -jar selenium-server.jar -htmlSuite "*firefox3" "http://www.google.com" "/root/google.ts.html" "/root/google_report.html"

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