Selenuim 2 (WebDriver 2) and The Trouble of Automatic Firefox Updates

One day all my Selenium-based tests suddenly broke with error message: "org.openqa.selenium.firefox.NotConnectedException: Unable to connect to host localhost on port 7055 after 45000 ms." That day my Firefox was automatically updated from 10 to 11. All tests were fine before the update. I guessed that it was the update that broke all the tests. The full error message is below (with a little modification removing security sensitive information):

[TestNG] Running:
  C:\Documents and Settings\ted-gao\Local Settings\Temp\testng-eclipse--811630090\testng-customsuite.xml

org.openqa.selenium.firefox.NotConnectedException: Unable to connect to host localhost on port 7055 after 45000 ms. Firefox console output:
*** LOG addons.xpi: startup
*** LOG addons.xpi: Skipping unavailable install location app-system-local
*** LOG addons.xpi: Skipping unavailable install location app-system-share
*** LOG addons.xpi: Ignoring file entry whose name is not a valid add-on ID: C:\DOCUME~1\TED-GAO\LOCALS~1\Temp\anonymous4693713743778448909webdriver-profile\extensions\webdriver-staging
*** LOG addons.xpi: checkForChanges
*** LOG addons.xpi: No changes found

    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.internal.NewProfileExtensionConnection.start(NewProfileExtensionConnection.java:95)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.startClient(FirefoxDriver.java:147)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:75)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:127)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:82)
   (a few lines removed here)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.testng.internal.MethodInvocationHelper.invokeMethod(MethodInvocationHelper.java:80)
    at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurationMethod(Invoker.java:543)
    at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurations(Invoker.java:212)
    at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurations(Invoker.java:140)
    at org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.invokeBeforeClassMethods(TestMethodWorker.java:175)
    at org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.run(TestMethodWorker.java:107)
    at org.testng.TestRunner.privateRun(TestRunner.java:753)
    at org.testng.TestRunner.run(TestRunner.java:613)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.runTest(SuiteRunner.java:337)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.runSequentially(SuiteRunner.java:330)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.privateRun(SuiteRunner.java:292)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.run(SuiteRunner.java:241)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.runSuite(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:64)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.run(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:87)
    at org.testng.TestNG.runSuitesSequentially(TestNG.java:1170)
    at org.testng.TestNG.runSuitesLocally(TestNG.java:1094)
    at org.testng.TestNG.run(TestNG.java:1006)
    at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.run(RemoteTestNG.java:107)
    at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.initAndRun(RemoteTestNG.java:210)
    at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.main(RemoteTestNG.java:170)
FAILED CONFIGURATION: @BeforeClass setup
org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Failed to connect to binary FirefoxBinary(D:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe) on port 7055; process output follows:
*** LOG addons.xpi: startup
*** LOG addons.xpi: Skipping unavailable install location app-system-local
*** LOG addons.xpi: Skipping unavailable install location app-system-share
*** LOG addons.xpi: Ignoring file entry whose name is not a valid add-on ID: C:\DOCUME~1\TED-GAO\LOCALS~1\Temp\anonymous4693713743778448909webdriver-profile\extensions\webdriver-staging
*** LOG addons.xpi: checkForChanges
*** LOG addons.xpi: No changes found

Build info: version: '2.14.0', revision: 'unknown', time: '2011-11-29 13:13:16'
System info: os.name: 'Windows XP', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '5.1', java.version: '1.6.0_17'
Driver info: driver.version: FirefoxDriver
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.internal.NewProfileExtensionConnection.start(NewProfileExtensionConnection.java:107)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.startClient(FirefoxDriver.java:147)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:75)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:127)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:82)
    (a few lines removed here)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.testng.internal.MethodInvocationHelper.invokeMethod(MethodInvocationHelper.java:80)
    at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurationMethod(Invoker.java:543)
    at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurations(Invoker.java:212)
    at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurations(Invoker.java:140)
    at org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.invokeBeforeClassMethods(TestMethodWorker.java:175)
    at org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.run(TestMethodWorker.java:107)
    at org.testng.TestRunner.privateRun(TestRunner.java:753)
    at org.testng.TestRunner.run(TestRunner.java:613)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.runTest(SuiteRunner.java:337)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.runSequentially(SuiteRunner.java:330)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.privateRun(SuiteRunner.java:292)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunner.run(SuiteRunner.java:241)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.runSuite(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:64)
    at org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.run(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:87)
    at org.testng.TestNG.runSuitesSequentially(TestNG.java:1170)
    at org.testng.TestNG.runSuitesLocally(TestNG.java:1094)
    at org.testng.TestNG.run(TestNG.java:1006)
    at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.run(RemoteTestNG.java:107)
    at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.initAndRun(RemoteTestNG.java:210)
    at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.main(RemoteTestNG.java:170)
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.firefox.NotConnectedException: Unable to connect to host localhost on port 7055 after 45000 ms. Firefox console output:
*** LOG addons.xpi: startup
*** LOG addons.xpi: Skipping unavailable install location app-system-local
*** LOG addons.xpi: Skipping unavailable install location app-system-share
*** LOG addons.xpi: Ignoring file entry whose name is not a valid add-on ID: C:\DOCUME~1\TED-GAO\LOCALS~1\Temp\anonymous4693713743778448909webdriver-profile\extensions\webdriver-staging
*** LOG addons.xpi: checkForChanges
*** LOG addons.xpi: No changes found

    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.internal.NewProfileExtensionConnection.start(NewProfileExtensionConnection.java:95)
    ... 33 more

SKIPPED CONFIGURATION: @AfterMethod teardown
SKIPPED: testHomePage
SKIPPED: testBenefitPage
SKIPPED: testProviderLocatorPageFromSideMenu
SKIPPED: testProviderSearchByZip
SKIPPED: testProviderLocatorPageFromTopMenu
SKIPPED: testWellness

===============================================
    Default test
    Tests run: 6, Failures: 0, Skips: 6
    Configuration Failures: 1, Skips: 1
===============================================


===============================================
Default suite
Total tests run: 6, Failures: 0, Skips: 6
Configuration Failures: 1, Skips: 1
===============================================

[TestNG] Time taken by org.testng.reporters.SuiteHTMLReporter@2079451: 141 ms
[TestNG] Time taken by org.testng.reporters.EmailableReporter@207a59c: 31 ms
[TestNG] Time taken by [TestListenerAdapter] Passed:0 Failed:0 Skipped:0]: 16 ms
[TestNG] Time taken by org.testng.reporters.JUnitReportReporter@207a66b: 15 ms
[TestNG] Time taken by org.testng.reporters.XMLReporter@20795a3: 32 ms

Even though the error message might seem suggesting something else. The really reason was that the version of WebDriver that I was using (2.11.0) was not compatible with Firefox 11 (at that point of time, there was not any version of WebDriver that supported Firefox 11).

It was too much trouble to uninstall Firefox 11 and to reinstall Firefox 10. My solution is to copy the base directory of a Firefox 10 installation (and all sub-directories, etc) on another computer to my computer, and use the following code fragment to point to the specific Firefox binary:

FirefoxBinary binary = new FirefoxBinary(new File(firefoxBinaryPath));
WebDriver webDriver = new FirefoxDriver(binary, profile);

Where firefoxBinaryPath is a String representing the path to the Firefox binary executable; profile is a FirefoxProfile object. (My another post is about choosing Firefox profile for WebDriver.)

It works. All my Selenium-based tests work again.

To disable automatic Firefox updates, follow this article.