Firefox connection refused when adding -profile argument to python selenium options

Question

I'm attempting to add options to the startup of my Firefox selenium driver in python to capture crash data. The function I use to startup the driver looks like this:

import os 
from selenium import webdriver  
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options as FFOptions
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.webdriver import WebDriver as FirefoxWebDriver 
import tempfile
SELENIUM_TEMP_DIR = os.path.abspath('./data/raw')


def get_local_firefox_driver():
    
    os.environ['MOZ_FORCE_DISABLE_E10S'] = '1'
    ff_options = FFOptions()

    # Add custom crash dump folder
    profile_temp = tempfile.mkdtemp(".selenium", dir=SELENIUM_TEMP_DIR)
    print("*** Using profile: {}".format(profile_temp))
    ff_options.add_argument("-profile")
    ff_options.add_argument(profile_temp)

    ff_profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
    # set some privacy settings
    ff_profile.set_preference("places.history.enabled", False)
    ff_profile.set_preference("privacy.clearOnShutdown.offlineApps", True)
    ff_profile.set_preference("privacy.clearOnShutdown.passwords", True)
    ff_profile.set_preference("privacy.clearOnShutdown.siteSettings", True)
    ff_profile.set_preference("privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown", True)
    ff_profile.set_preference("signon.rememberSignons", False)
    ff_profile.set_preference("network.cookie.lifetimePolicy", 2)
    ff_profile.set_preference("network.dns.disablePrefetch", True)
    ff_profile.set_preference("network.http.sendRefererHeader", 0)
    ff_profile.set_preference("permissions.default.image", 2)

    driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=ff_profile, options=ff_options)
    return driver

When I attempt to startup the driver with this version of the function I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/username/project_name/error_demo.py", line 2, in <module>
    driver = get_local_firefox_driver(headless=False)
  File "/Users/username/project_name/src/selenium_helper.py", line 129, in get_local_firefox_driver
    driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=ff_profile, options=ff_options, capabilities=ff_capabilities)
  File "/Users/username/miniconda3/envs/live_auction/lib/python3.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/webdriver.py", line 174, in __init__
    keep_alive=True)
  File "/Users/username/miniconda3/envs/live_auction/lib/python3.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 157, in __init__
    self.start_session(capabilities, browser_profile)
  File "/Users/username/miniconda3/envs/live_auction/lib/python3.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 252, in start_session
    response = self.execute(Command.NEW_SESSION, parameters)
  File "/Users/username/miniconda3/envs/live_auction/lib/python3.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 321, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "/Users/username/miniconda3/envs/live_auction/lib/python3.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.TimeoutException: Message: connection refused

During the crash, Firefox actually opens and looks likes this:

If I comment out the section of code that is intended to capture the crash data

# Add custom crash dump folder
profile_temp = tempfile.mkdtemp(".selenium", dir=SELENIUM_TEMP_DIR)
print("*** Using profile: {}".format(profile_temp))
ff_options.add_argument("-profile")
ff_options.add_argument(profile_temp)

I get no errors and the Firefox browser opens up like this:

How does get_local_firefox_driver() need to be modified to get Firefox and geckodriver to startup correctly with the ability to capture crash data?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 19 '20 at 05:31

1

I think something like this should work:

import tempfile

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options

# Custom profile folder to keep the minidump files
profile = tempfile.mkdtemp(".selenium")
print("*** Using profile: {}".format(profile))

# Use the above folder as custom profile
opts = Options()
opts.add_argument("-profile")
opts.add_argument(profile)
opts.binary = "/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox"

driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=opts,
    # hard-code the Marionette port so geckodriver can connect
    service_args=["--marionette-port", "2828"])

# Your test code which crashes Firefox

If that didn't work I recommend you check out the official documentation

answered Sep 19 '20 at 05:31

I found/tried hard-coding the marionette port recently. The driver is stable with it when I'm not including the tempfile. When I add the tempfile with the marionette args, there's a weird delay (the python code moves on before the driver's ready) and firefox crashes. The firefox crash is also weird because it doesn't show up with a python traceback. It just closes inexplicably. – Jed Sep 21 '20 at 17:47
The code you provided is exactly like the code I linked to in my question. It doesn't really help. Where in the official documentation would you suggest I look? The documentation you provided is for the whole Firefox application. – Jed Sep 21 '20 at 22:21

Firefox connection refused when adding -profile argument to python selenium options

1 Answers1