CI server using Firefox

If you are like me, you always setup a CI to ensure things that you already finished are not broken by things you are currently doing.  And if you are like me, you use capybara, selenium-webdriver, and firefox to actually test the results in a browser.  The rub comes when the CI server (running headless) needs to run firefox, which needs a screen.

Virtual Frame Buffer (xvfb) is a great package.  All it does is provide an X11 interface in memory instead of requiring a screen.  Below I detail what I do on Ubuntu, but it should work the same on any Linux distro.

Installing Firefox

$ sudo apt-get install firefox

view raw install_firefox.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Testing Firefox

	$ echo $DISPLAY
	localhost:10.0
	$ firefox

view raw test_firefox.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Once firefox is installed it can be tested on a X11-forwarded ssh connection.  X11-forwarding has to be enabled on the server and client and can be tested by checking DISPLAY.

Installing Xvfb

	$ sudo apt-get install xvfb
	...Lots of stuff...

view raw install_xvfb.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Testing Firefox again

	$ sudo apt-get install imagemagick
	$ Xvfb :1 &
	$ export DISPLAY=:1
	$ firefox http://google.com
	...from another terminal...
	$ export DISPLAY=:1
	$ import -window root example.png
	...from another terminal...
	$ killall firefox
	$ firefox example.png

view raw test_firefox_again.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The easiest way to test is to use image magick to take a screen shot of the VFB and save it to an image that can be opened in Firefox.  If the image opens and it looks like a firefox browser is running on the google page then you did it correctly.

Create a xvfb startup script

/usr/bin/Xvfb :1 &

view raw xvfb.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

On ubuntu no start script is provided, but a simple one put in /etc/init.d/xvfb is enough.

Getting the CI server to use the VFB
At this point getting a CI server to use Xvfb will depend on how it is started.  If you use the Xvfb startup script then the display is :1.  All you have to do is export DISPLAY=:1 before the CI server starts.