unable to call firefox from selenium in python on AWS machine
Solution 1
The problem is Firefox requires a display. I've used pyvirtualdisplay in my example to simulate a display. The solution is:
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
from selenium import webdriver
display = Display(visible=0, size=(1024, 768))
display.start()
driver= webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("http://www.somewebsite.com/")
<---some code--->
#driver.close() # Close the current window.
driver.quit() # Quit the driver and close every associated window.
display.stop()
Please note that pyvirtualdisplay requires one of the following back-ends: Xvfb, Xephyr, Xvnc.
This should resolve your issue.
Solution 2
I too had faced same problem.I was on Firefox 47 and Selenium 2.53. So what I did was downgraded Firefox to 45. This worked.
1) Remove Firefox 47 first :
sudo apt-get purge firefox
2) Check for available versions:
apt-cache show firefox | grep Version
It will show available firefox versions like:
Version: 47.0+build3-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
Version: 45.0.2+build1-0ubuntu1
3) Tell which build to download
sudo apt-get install firefox=45.0.2+build1-0ubuntu1
4) Next you have to not upgrade to the newer version again.
sudo apt-mark hold firefox
5) If you want to upgrade later
sudo apt-mark unhold firefox
sudo apt-get upgrade
Hope this helps.
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David
Updated on July 09, 2022Comments
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David almost 2 years
I am trying to use selenium from python to scrape some dynamics pages with javascript. However, I cannot call firefox after I followed the instruction of selenium on the pypi page(http://pypi.python.org/pypi/selenium). I installed firefox on AWS ubuntu 12.04. The error message I got is:
In [1]: from selenium import webdriver In [2]: br = webdriver.Firefox() --------------------------------------------------------------------------- WebDriverException Traceback (most recent call last) /home/ubuntu/<ipython-input-2-d6a5d754ea44> in <module>() ----> 1 br = webdriver.Firefox() /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/webdriver.pyc in __init__(self, firefox_profile, firefox_binary, timeout) 49 RemoteWebDriver.__init__(self, 50 command_executor=ExtensionConnection("127.0.0.1", self.profile, ---> 51 self.binary, timeout), 52 desired_capabilities=DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX) 53 /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/extension_connection.pyc in __init__(self, host, firefox_profile, firefox_binary, timeout) 45 self.profile.add_extension() 46 ---> 47 self.binary.launch_browser(self.profile) 48 _URL = "http://%s:%d/hub" % (HOST, PORT) 49 RemoteConnection.__init__( /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/firefox_binary.pyc in launch_browser(self, profile) 42 43 self._start_from_profile_path(self.profile.path) ---> 44 self._wait_until_connectable() 45 46 def kill(self): /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/firefox_binary.pyc in _wait_until_connectable(self) 79 raise WebDriverException("The browser appears to have exited " 80 "before we could connect. The output was: %s" % ---> 81 self._get_firefox_output()) 82 if count == 30: 83 self.kill() WebDriverException: Message: 'The browser appears to have exited before we could connect. The output was: Error: no display specified\n'
I did search on the web and found that this problem happened with other people (https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/selenium-users/21sJrOJULZY). But I don't understand the solution, if it is.
Can anyone help me please? Thanks!
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Blender over 11 years
Error: no display specified
means that the browser doesn't have a screen to display its main window on. You'll need to find a way to run Firefox headless: stackoverflow.com/questions/10060417/python-firefox-headless. This answer in particular looks useful: stackoverflow.com/a/6300672/464744 -
David over 11 years@Blender Thank you so much. The second link solved my problem. Sometimes I just cannot find the solution from google if I don't have the right keyword in my mind.
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Gilles Quenot over 11 years@Blender : how did you get an anchor in your URL to a response in a page ? I see no links like this in the pages.
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John Keyes over 11 years@sputnick Look at the 'share' href.
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David over 11 yearsThanks. One quick question: what's difference between driver.close() and driver.quite()?
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Corey Goldberg over 8 yearsto help people in the future who stumble across this.. please note that the comment differentiating close/quit from @That1Guy is just plain wrong. Also note the code in his answer never properly shuts down the underlying driver and may leak processes or file descriptors.
driver.close()
simply closes the current window. It will leave other windows open and the driver active.driver.quit()
actually quits the driver and closes every associated window. If you want more details about the difference, please read the selenium webdriver source code. -
That1Guy over 8 yearsA note to future readers: The comment @CoreyGoldberg is referring to was in fact incorrect. I had confused not only the methods I mentioned referring to Selenium, but also with another project I was working on at the time. Please refer to the documentation for
driver.quit()
anddrver.close()
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That1Guy over 8 years@gvrocha I haven't tested, but I don't see why
pyvirtualdisplay
wouldn't work on a mac. -
sridhar249 about 8 yearsI tried the above steps. But, i still get the same error. Can anyone help? I installed xvfb by running sudo apt-get install xvfb. And then tried to run the script mentioned in this answer. But, i still get the same error "selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: The browser appears to have exited before we could connect..."
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That1Guy about 8 years@sridhar249 Are you sure you remembered the
display.start()
step? -
sridhar249 about 8 years@That1Guy yes, i did not miss that. Here is my code:
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display from selenium import webdriver display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600)) display.start() browser = webdriver.Firefox() browser.get('http://www.google.com') browser.quit() display.stop()
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That1Guy about 8 years@sridhar249 Interesting. I'll have to try a few things and get back to you.
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sridhar249 about 8 yearsThanks @That1Guy. Will look forward to your response.
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sridhar249 about 8 yearsI would like to mention that it worked perfectly for me on google chrome. I noticed this issue only with Firefox driver.
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That1Guy about 8 years@sridhar249 Perhaps this is a bug with the Firefox driver. I was unable to reproduce this. What version of Selenium are you using?
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sridhar249 about 8 years@That1Guy, i am using selenium 2.53.0 which is the latest version. My firefox version 47.0, which is also the latest version. My OS is: 14.04LTS. Since i am using the latest builds, if this is an existing issue, i thought other people should also be facing this. But, i don't see anyone complaining. Is your selenium, firefox or OS different from mine?
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Adam Williams over 4 yearsWhy are you setting it to false?
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David Skarbrevik over 4 yearsThanks. Changed to True.