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 <a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="cea1bca9e0a1beaba0bfafe0a4abbabab7e0a4abbabab7e0bdabbcb8a2abbae09dabbcb8a2abba86afa0aaa2abbc8efffff6f8a8afac">[email protected]</a>
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 <a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="08677a6f2667786d66796926626d7c7c7126626d7c7c71265b6d7a7e6d7a48396e6e6a306c6b">[email protected]</a>

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

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 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.

Method 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!

Method 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.

Method 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

Method 5

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.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0