Running selenium tests using nightwatch on linux

Question

I have a linux box and I am trying to run selenium tests (written in nightwatch) on it. I installed the chromedriver at http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=2.9/ (the linuxx64 bit one)

I also installed the standalone selenium jar

I run the following command

DISPLAY=:1 xvfb-run java -jar lib/selenium-server-standalone-2.52.0.jar -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver=lib/chromedriver

Here's my nightwatch configuration:

{
    "src_folders": [
        "tests"
    ],
    "output_folder": "reports",
    "custom_commands_path": "custom_commands",
    "custom_assertions_path": "",
    "page_objects_path": "",
    "live_output" : true,
    "globals_path": "globals.js",
    "selenium": {
        "start_process": true,
        "server_path": "lib/selenium-server-standalone-2.52.0.jar",
        "log_path": "",
        "host": "127.0.0.1",
        "port": 4444,
        "cli_args": {
            "webdriver.chrome.driver": "lib/chromedriver",
            "webdriver.chromeJenkins.driver": "../../tools/chromedriver/chromedriver",
            "webdriver.ie.driver": "lib/IEDriverServer_x64_2.52.2.exe",
            "trustAllSSLCertificates": true
        }
    },
    "test_workers": {
        "enabled": true,
        "workers": "auto"
    },
    "test_settings": {
        "default": {
            "launch_url": "",
            "selenium_port": 4444,
            "selenium_host": "localhost",
            "silent": true,
            "screenshots": {
                "enabled": true,
                "on_failure": true,
                "on_error": true,
                "path": "./screenshots"
            },
            "end_session_on_fail": false,
            "desiredCapabilities": {
                "browserName": "chrome",
                "javascriptEnabled": true,
                "acceptSslCerts": true,
                "chromeOptions": {
                    "args": [
                        "use-fake-device-for-media-stream",
                        "use-fake-ui-for-media-stream"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
      "jenkins" : {
            "selenium_port"  : 4444,
            "selenium_host"  : "127.0.0.1",
            "cli_args" : {
                "webdriver.chrome.driver" : "lib/chromedriver"
        },
        "chromeOptions" : {
             "args" : ["--no-sandbox"]
        },
            "desiredCapabilities": {
                "browserName": "chrome",
                "javascriptEnabled": true,
                "acceptSslCerts": true,
                "platform" : "LINUX",
            "chromeOptions" : {
                "args" : ["--no-sandbox"]
            } 
            }
    }
}   

Then I run the following command

 DISPLAY=:1 xvfb-run --server-args="-screen 0, 1366x768x24" ./nightwatch -e jenkins --test tests/blog.js

The tests start to run, but when I look at the output the driver gets stuck at a particular element. It tries to find the element but times out. When I run the tests on my local machine, I do not get this error.

Am I doing something wrong here?

Answer 1

Check your browser viewport size. It's probably smaller in xvfb than it is on your main screen, and the site your testing may change behavior at different resolutions. Saw that my first day.

TL;DR My chrome window was the same size, but opening the debugging pane changed site behavior.