Xvfb or Firefox throwing errors & gratuitously logging

Question

per the answer to this question, I'm running Xvfb to make a virtual display so firefox will run on my CentOS server. (I don't need to see firefox or do any actual key or screen input/output with firefox-- it just needs to run so Selenium can drive it.) I'm trying to figure out why Xvfb (or firefox) is throwing a bunch of errors.

I start up Xvfb with this command:

Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1024x768x24 &

And immediately after I start it, a couple of error messages are echoed back to the screen (oddly, they appear after the shell prompt):

[root@host /home/lm/cron]# Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1024x768x24 &               
[1] 9214
[root@host /home/lm/cron]# expected keysym, got XF86TouchpadOn: line 120 of inet
expected keysym, got XF86TouchpadOff: line 121 of inet

And many more errors show up in the Selenium log show up when I run my Selenium test script:

5 XSELINUXs still allocated at reset
SCREEN: 0 objects of 176 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
DEVICE: 4 objects of 48 bytes = 192 total bytes 0 private allocs
CLIENT: 0 objects of 144 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
WINDOW: 0 objects of 48 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
PIXMAP: 1 objects of 16 bytes = 16 total bytes 0 private allocs
GC: 0 objects of 56 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
CURSOR: 0 objects of 8 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
CURSOR_BITS: 0 objects of 8 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
DBE_WINDOW: 0 objects of 24 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
TOTAL: 5 objects, 208 bytes, 0 allocs
4 DEVICEs still allocated at reset
DEVICE: 4 objects of 48 bytes = 192 total bytes 0 private allocs
CLIENT: 0 objects of 144 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
WINDOW: 0 objects of 48 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
PIXMAP: 1 objects of 16 bytes = 16 total bytes 0 private allocs
GC: 0 objects of 56 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
CURSOR: 0 objects of 8 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
CURSOR_BITS: 0 objects of 8 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
DBE_WINDOW: 0 objects of 24 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
TOTAL: 5 objects, 208 bytes, 0 allocs
1 PIXMAPs still allocated at reset
PIXMAP: 1 objects of 16 bytes = 16 total bytes 0 private allocs
GC: 0 objects of 56 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
CURSOR: 0 objects of 8 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
CURSOR_BITS: 0 objects of 8 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
DBE_WINDOW: 0 objects of 24 bytes = 0 total bytes 0 private allocs
TOTAL: 1 objects, 16 bytes, 0 allocs
14:33:47.919 INFO - Done: /session/1330284794945
expected keysym, got XF86TouchpadOn: line 120 of inet
expected keysym, got XF86TouchpadOff: line 121 of inet

Now, here's the funny part, despite ALL of this mess, everything is working: Selenium is talking to firefox property, firefox is doing what it's supposed to and passing it back to Selenium, etc. I just want to know if (a) I should be worried about all these messages/errors, and (b) how can I clean this up? (It actually appears to me that most of this is some kind of verbose logging info about 'allocs'-- which I'd like to turn off-- and then those 'expected keysym' messages are exceptions being thrown.)

Solution

I don't think they're errors.

It's just the X server being chatty.

You can send those messages to /dev/null, also, by starting Xvfb using Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1024x768x24 2>/dev/null &

Comments

[Admin]

I don't think they're errors. I think it's just the X server being chatty. You can send those messages to /dev/null, also, by adding "2>/dev/null" before the "&" in your command.