Selenium starts firefox but only stays on a blank page

Question

I've been looking at the distinction between webDriver.naviagate.to and webDriver.get and they seem the same.

Certainly a web page launches..but then a big nothing burger. Not sure where to start to even figure out what's happening or why.

slow-motion crash:

thufir@dur:~/NetBeansProjects/scrape$ 
thufir@dur:~/NetBeansProjects/scrape$ gradle run

> Task :run
Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Timed out waiting 45 seconds for Firefox to start.
Build info: version: '3.141.59', revision: 'e82be7d358', time: '2018-11-14T08:17:03'
System info: host: 'dur', ip: '127.0.1.1', os.name: 'Linux', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '4.18.0-25-generic', java.version: '12.0.1'
Driver info: driver.version: FirefoxDriver
        at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.XpiDriverService.waitUntilAvailable(XpiDriverService.java:247)
        at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.XpiDriverService.start(XpiDriverService.java:159)
        at org.openqa.selenium.remote.service.DriverCommandExecutor.execute(DriverCommandExecutor.java:79)
        at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:552)
        at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.startSession(RemoteWebDriver.java:213)
        at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:131)
        at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:147)
        at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:125)
        at net.bounceme.dur.scrape.Scrape.initWebDriver(Scrape.java:37)
        at net.bounceme.dur.scrape.App.runApp(App.java:28)
        at net.bounceme.dur.scrape.App.main(App.java:18)
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.net.UrlChecker$TimeoutException: Timed out waiting for [http://localhost:9070/hub/status] to be available after 45010 ms
        at org.openqa.selenium.net.UrlChecker.waitUntilAvailable(UrlChecker.java:100)
        at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.XpiDriverService.waitUntilAvailable(XpiDriverService.java:245)
        ... 10 more
Caused by: java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException
        at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:204)
        at com.google.common.util.concurrent.SimpleTimeLimiter.callWithTimeout(SimpleTimeLimiter.java:156)
        at org.openqa.selenium.net.UrlChecker.waitUntilAvailable(UrlChecker.java:75)
        ... 11 more

> Task :run FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':run'.
> Process 'command '/home/thufir/.sdkman/candidates/java/12.0.1-zulu/bin/java'' finished with non-zero exit value 1

* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output. Run with --scan to get full insights.

* Get more help at https://help.gradle.org

BUILD FAILED in 48s
3 actionable tasks: 1 executed, 2 up-to-date
thufir@dur:~/NetBeansProjects/scrape$ 

code:

package net.bounceme.dur.scrape;

import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import java.nio.file.FileSystems;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import org.basex.core.Context;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class Scrape {

    private static final Logger LOG = Logger.getLogger(Scrape.class.getName());
    private Properties properties = new Properties();
    private Properties systemProperties = new Properties();
    private final Context context = new Context();
    private WebDriver webDriver = null;

    private Scrape() {
        // needs a properties file for configuration
    }

    public Scrape(Properties properties) {
        this.properties = properties;
        LOG.fine(properties.toString());
    }

    public void initWebDriver() throws MalformedURLException {
        Path path = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath(properties.getProperty("gecko_path"));
        String webdriver = properties.getProperty("webdriver");
        URL url = new URL(properties.getProperty("url"));
        LOG.fine(path.toString());
        System.setProperty(webdriver, path.toString());
        LOG.fine(System.getProperties().toString());
        webDriver = new FirefoxDriver();
        webDriver.get(url.toString());
        LOG.info(url.toString());
    }

}

Answer 1

runs fine with chromium:

thufir@dur:~/NetBeansProjects/scrape$ 
thufir@dur:~/NetBeansProjects/scrape$ gradle run

> Task :run
Starting ChromeDriver 75.0.3770.90 (a6dcaf7e3ec6f70a194cc25e8149475c6590e025-refs/branch-heads/3770@{#1003}) on port 25016
Only local connections are allowed.
Please protect ports used by ChromeDriver and related test frameworks to prevent access by malicious code.
Oct. 12, 2019 11:24:13 P.M. org.openqa.selenium.remote.ProtocolHandshake createSession
INFO: Detected dialect: W3C
Oct. 12, 2019 11:24:15 P.M. net.bounceme.dur.scrape.Scrape initWebDriver
INFO: ToolsQA – Demo Website to Practice Automation – Demo Website to Practice Automation

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 6s
3 actionable tasks: 1 executed, 2 up-to-date
thufir@dur:~/NetBeansProjects/scrape$ 

relevant method with chromium config:

    public void initWebDriver() throws MalformedURLException {
        Path path = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath(properties.getProperty("chromium_path"));
        String webdriver = properties.getProperty("chromium_webdriver");
        URL url = new URL(properties.getProperty("url"));
        LOG.fine(path.toString());
        System.setProperty(webdriver, path.toString());
        LOG.fine(System.getProperties().toString());
        webDriver = new ChromeDriver();
        webDriver.get(url.toString());
        LOG.info(webDriver.getTitle());
        webDriver.quit();
    }

more of a work-around than solution.