Webrat Selenium: Failed to start new browser session: Error while launching browser (Selenium::CommandError)

Question

I'm trying to follow the tutorial set out in The RSpec Book and I'm onto the chapter about making Webrat work with Selenium.

Here is my features/support/env.rb (following the directions detailed within the book):

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= "test"
require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../../config/environment')

require 'cucumber/formatter/unicode' # Remove this line if you don't want Cucumber Unicode support
require 'cucumber/rails/world'
require 'cucumber/rails/active_record'
require 'cucumber/web/tableish'

require 'webrat'
require 'webrat/core/matchers'

Webrat.configure do |config|
  config.mode = :selenium #was :rack
  config.application_framework = :rack
  config.open_error_files = false # Set to true if you want error pages to pop up in the browser
end

ActionController::Base.allow_rescue = false
Cucumber::Rails::World.use_transactional_fixtures = false

if defined?(ActiveRecord::Base)
  begin
    require 'database_cleaner'
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation
    rescue LoadError => ignore_if_database_cleaner_not_present
  end
end

class ActiveSupport::TestCase
  setup do |session|
    session.host! "localhost:3001"
  end
end

When I run rake cucumber I get the following error:

Failed to start new browser session: Error while launching browser (Selenium::CommandError)

I tried replacing selenium-server.jar in the webrat gem folder with the 1.0.3 version, according to a fix detailed in a number of places on the web, but I still get this same error message.

While the cucumber task is executing, firefox does flash on the screen. I've tried both with and without firefox already open - same error. I'm on a Debian machine and using webrat 0.7.3 and selenium-client (1.2.18) according to gem list.

I have no idea how to approach this one. :/

Here is a good resource that may help others with the same problem as I'm experiencing: qaautomation.net/?p=15 (although it wasn't the solution for me.) — newUser

Piotr Murach Piotr Murach · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-12T11:09:10

The way I have approached this problem after having the same nasty error is by:

gem install webrat
gem install selenium-client
gem install selenium
selenium install - this will grab the latest selenium server packaged as a jar
selenium - this will start the server
cucumber in your rails root directory to see all greens provided that you have done the appropriate setup mentioned above in the question.

It may well be a quick and dirty solution but it works with latest versions of all gems and allows to run tests. I would welcome more appropriate setup but for now this will do for me.

Webrat Selenium: Failed to start new browser session: Error while launching browser (Selenium::CommandError)

1 Answers