running selenium rc remotely

[Mark Devine]

Is there any way of running selenium without physically opening a browser? I want to ssh (via putty) from a windows box to a linux server and run python based selenium scripts on a remote url. I can achieve this by starting an xserver through cygwin, sshing to the Linux Server and setting the DISPLAY env variable but I'd rather not have to do that. I'd like to be able to run the script from anywhere. I will have the selenium-server threaded and running in the background. I just need to know if I can get selenium to work without actually opening a browser?

[Mark Devine]

Here is the output from the selenium server:

09:48:25.696 INFO - Java: Sun Microsystems Inc. 1.6.0_02-b05
09:48:25.697 INFO - OS: Linux 2.6.9-42.ELsmp i386
09:48:25.699 INFO - v0.9.2 [2006], with Core v0.8.3 [1879]
09:48:25.758 INFO - Version Jetty/5.1.x
09:48:25.759 INFO - Started HttpContext[/selenium-server/driver,/selenium-server/driver]
09:48:25.760 INFO - Started HttpContext[/selenium-server,/selenium-server]
09:48:25.760 INFO - Started HttpContext[/,/]
09:48:25.765 INFO - Started SocketListener on 0.0.0.0:4444
09:48:25.765 INFO - Started org.mortbay.jetty.Server@15a8767
09:48:30.613 INFO - Checking Resource aliases
09:48:30.614 INFO - Command request: getNewBrowserSession[*firefox, http://dx2:8080] on session null
09:48:30.656 INFO - Launching session 710614
09:48:30.674 INFO - Preparing Firefox profile...

(firefox-bin:21848): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
09:48:50.777 WARN - GET /selenium-server/driver/?cmd=getNewBrowserSession&1=%2Afirefox&2=http%3A%2F%2Fdx2%3A8080 HTTP/1.1
java.lang.RuntimeException: Timed out waiting for profile to be created!
at org.openqa.selenium.server.browserlaunchers.FirefoxCustomProfileLauncher.waitForFullProfileToBeCreated(FirefoxCustomProfileLauncher.java:271)
at org.openqa.selenium.server.browserlaunchers.FirefoxCustomProfileLauncher.launch(FirefoxCustomProfileLauncher.java:147)
at org.openqa.selenium.server.browserlaunchers.AbstractBrowserLauncher.launchRemoteSession(AbstractBrowserLauncher.java:24)
at org.openqa.selenium.server.SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.getNewBrowserSession(SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.java:587)
at org.openqa.selenium.server.SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.doCommand(SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.java:396)
at org.openqa.selenium.server.SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.handleCommandRequest(SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.java:375)
at org.openqa.selenium.server.SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.handle(SeleniumDriverResourceHandler.java:123)
at org.mortbay.http.HttpContext.handle(HttpContext.java:1530)
at org.mortbay.http.HttpContext.handle(HttpContext.java:1482)
at org.mortbay.http.HttpServer.service(HttpServer.java:909)
at org.mortbay.http.HttpConnection.service(HttpConnection.java:816)
at org.mortbay.http.HttpConnection.handleNext(HttpConnection.java:982)
at org.mortbay.http.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:833)
at org.mortbay.http.SocketListener.handleConnection(SocketListener.java:244)
at org.mortbay.util.ThreadedServer.handle(ThreadedServer.java:357)
at org.mortbay.util.ThreadPool$PoolThread.run(ThreadPool.java:534)