Last week we ran into some issues on Scrutinizer CI with our Behat Selenium test suite. These things tend to be quite hard to debug: as Selenium is running headless in X virtual framebuffer (Xvfb) there is nothing to see for the developer. It’s possible to take screenshots, but this requires code changes (probably).

X11 Forwarding

One of the cool things you can do with Selenium (or more particular Firefox or Chrome) is X11 forwarding. If you’re running a X.Org Window system it is possible to forward the display from one box to another. When you’re on a Linux desktop environment you’re golden, but if you’re on a Mac like me you have to install XQuartz to get it working. Follow the instructions on the site and don’t forget to logout and login after installation otherwise your $DISPLAY enviroment variable is empty. By the way: if you’re a Windows user I honestly suggest to get a Mac or install Ubuntu to get it working :).

If you want more information on this topic there is plenty of information to be found on the interwebz.

SSH Remote debugging session

To get this X11 forwarding working on Scrutinizer CI first request a new SSH debugging session. This can be done on the inspection page. When the inspection fails you can retry but in the same dropdown also choose for “SSH Remote debugging”. The first time you do this it will ask for your public keys from Github, you should accept the request. It may take some time but after a few seconds or minutes you’ll receive a SSH login to connect to. Add an -X switch after ssh, so the command looks like this:

Now login on the remote machine and verify your $DISPLAY server is set (should be something like localhost:10.0). Open ~/.profile in your favourite editor and remove the line:

Do not log out, but create new SSH session with the command above. If all is fine you should be able to start firefox and see the browser appearing. Kill this firefox instance, and start Selenium in this session (java -jar /location/of/selenium.jar) and in the first session start your Behat tests.