RSelenium with newer Firefox images: Fail to decode image from marionette

Question

I am using RSelenium via docker and the standalone-firefox image v 3.11.0. Also, I am using R v 3.4.4 on Windows 10 (64-bit).

I am facing a peculiar issue, happening arbitrarily it seems. Here is my code:

# In the Docker Terminal
$ docker run -d -p 4445:4444 selenium/standalone-firefox:3.11.0

# In R
require(RSelenium)
require(XML)

remDr <- RSelenium::remoteDriver(remoteServerAddr = "192.168.99.100", port = 4445L)
remDr$open()

remDr$navigate("https://www.betvictor.com/")
Sys.sleep(1)
remDr$screenshot(display = TRUE)

Yielding the following error:

Selenium message:Failed to decode response from marionette
Build info: version: '3.11.0', revision: 'e59cfb3', time: '2018-03-11T20:33:15.31Z'
System info: host: '29208ebb0e68', ip: '172.17.0.2', os.name: 'Linux', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '4.9.89-boot2docker', java.version: '1.8.0_162'
Driver info: driver.version: unknown

Error:   Summary: UnknownError
 Detail: An unknown server-side error occurred while processing the command.
 class: org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException
 Further Details: run errorDetails method

I did some research on the topic:

It is indicated here that using older versions of Firefox, e.g. 2.53.0, or using Chrome should solve the issue.
Here a similar issue is discussed and it seems that using Selnium 3.4 or greater might solve that issue.

However, I tried using standalone-chrome:3.11.0 but remDr$open() then yields Selenium message:Unable to create new service: GeckoDriverService.

And as for 2., to quote the (RSelenium) documentation: "[The package] Provides a set of R bindings for the Selenium 2.0 WebDriver", which might explain why that error arose in the first place.

Is there a way to solve that issue, e.g. is it possible to update the RSelenium package such that it uses a more recent version of Selenium?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 02 '18 at 14:59

This code works for me:

library(RSelenium)
library(png)
library(openssl)

Sys.setenv(no_proxy="127.0.0.1,localhost,192.168.0.20")

extraCapabilities <- list(proxy = list(httpProxy = "proxy-server:8081",
                                       proxyType = "MANUAL",
                                       sslProxy = "proxy-server:8081"),
                                       acceptInsecureCerts = TRUE)



remDr <- remoteDriver(remoteServerAddr = "selenium.server.de"
                      , port = 4444
                      , browserName = "firefox"
                      , extraCapabilities = extraCapabilities)

remDr$open()

remDr$navigate("http://google.com")

remDr$screenshot(file = '/tmp/test.png')

res <- remDr$getStatus()

remDr$close()

My Docker-Selenium is behind a company proxy. This part in the extraCapabilities is not necessary for a normal use case. The environment variable no_proxy is also only necessary if you are working behind a proxy. The parameter "acceptInsecureCerts = TRUE" is important, otherwise problems will occur with newer Firefox versions. The command "makeFirexprofile" didn't work for me anymore. This is often found in the instructions for using proxies. It didn't work out that way. The error messages of RSelenium are also not useful. It makes more sense to raise the log level on the docker container. This works with -e JAVA_OPTS="-Dselenium.LOGGER.level=ALL". This shows the real error that has occurred.

I hope that helps. I was successful with the container firefox-standalone:3.12.

RSelenium with newer Firefox images: Fail to decode image from marionette

1 Answers1