Using VMRUN to execute selenium process in Ubuntu VM without XVFB

Question

I'm using vmrun.exe from VMware Workstation to start an Ubuntu 16 desktop VM and launch a Java selenium Firefox process in it. I can start and launch the script however I would like the selenium process to be visible in case a user would like to monitor it. It gives the following error when trying to launch firefox with a visible GUI.

org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Failed to connect to binary FirefoxBinary(/home/vmdops/firefox/firefox) on port 7055; process output follows: 
Error: GDK_BACKEND does not match available displays

The following bash script is used to launch the process

java -jar seleniumProcess.jar

I can execute the process headless with XVFB and run the selenium process in memory however then I cannot view the process running visually.

/usr/bin/Xvfb :1 & export DISPLAY=:1
java -jar seleniumProcess.jar

What is the proper terminology to explain why the firefox browser cannot be displayed?

Is there anyway to launch the selenium process from VMRUN that allows the firefox browser to display normally?

Thanks Conteh

Answer 1

I was able to resolve the issue adding -interactive to the end of the command

vmrun -T player -gu vmdops -gp xxxx runScriptInGuest  "C:\VMDOPS2\VMDOPS2.vmx" /bin/bash "sh /home/vmdops/autovpn/runProfiler.sh" -interactive

This works when the use is already logged in interactively. When I launch too quickly after starting the vm I get the following error.

Error: The specified guest user must be logged in interactively to perform this operation

So one must wait a while after booting.