Watching remote tests run

It can be incredibly helpful when you're troubleshooting Behat tests to watch the tests execute. It's fairly straightforward to install Selenium locally and watch @javascript tests execute in your browser of choice, a bit more challenging remotely.

Here's how I set up to do that on a remote Ubuntu 14.04 server.

VNC on the Server

1. Install dependencies:
   
   sudo apt-get install Xvfb tightvncserver xterm firefox
   
    
   • Xvfb and xterm are required for Firefox to run on the remote server
   • Firefox is required to run Behat's @javascript tests via Selenium
   • A VNC server, in this case tightvncserver, allows you to install a VNC client locally and watch the remote session.
      
2. Start the server

   
   sudo vncserver

3. Check the port:
   You'll get output like the following. Notice the display designation on
   the end, in this case, the digit 1:

   
   New 'X' desktop is [servername]:1

   Note: vncserver stays running. To verify the port it is listening on, use the command `sudo lsof -i -P | grep -i "listen"`.

4. Start Selenium:
   You'll need to specify the display when you start Selenium, and it doesn't hurt to use the command from the Not enough entropy post to be sure it's listening properly.
   
   DISPLAY=:1 java -jar -Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom [your/path/to/selenium.jar]

    

VNC on your desktop

1. Install a VNC Viewer
   I run Ubuntu on the desktop and use TightVNC's viewer:
   
   sudo apt-get install vncviewer
    
2. Open an ssh tunnel:

   On your local machine use the following command a terminal to create an ssh tunnel to the server. The last digit of the port corresponds to the display:

   
   ssh [serveraddress] -L 5901:localhost:5901
   
   This stays open in its own shell tab.

3. Run the local vncviewer:
   
   vncviewer localhost:5901