How can we execute Firefox on Centos through SSH?

Manashb18 · 11-22-2015, 12:56 PM

As we know Centos has no display and to execute a GUI Application like Firefox display is required. Therefore I have installed Xbfb to configure a virtual display and execute Firefox headless. Also put a shell script in /etc/init.d/ to start the Xvfb at Server start. But when I try to run Firefox getting following error message- Cannot open display localhost:10.0. Any idea?

John VV · 11-22-2015, 01:42 PM

Quote:

As we know Centos has no display and to execute a GUI Application like Firefox display is required

yes and no

xorg and a desktop manager ( default is gnome2 ) can be installed and used

what software are you using to remote log in and from what OS

putty is a common program to use

but running firefox ON your local system would be much easier

Manashb18 · 11-22-2015, 11:22 PM

Xorg and GNOME are installed.
Software used for login - Putty (X11 forwarding enable) and from Ubuntu OS.
Why do i need to execute Firefox remotely- In order to execute the selenium scripts.

timl · 11-22-2015, 11:40 PM

try

Quote:

ssh -X user@10.1.2.33 firefox -no-remote

This works from Fedora to Centos.

Another method is to wrap quotes around the command. Both seem to work

Quote:

ssh -X user@10.1.2.33 "firefox -no-remote"

suicidaleggroll · 11-23-2015, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manashb18

As we know Centos has no display and to execute a GUI Application like Firefox display is required. Therefore I have installed Xbfb to configure a virtual display and execute Firefox headless.

That is completely unnecessary. Shut off the virtual frame buffer, don't mess with your DISPLAY environment variable, open a terminal on your Ubuntu machine, ssh into the CentOS machine with "ssh -X", then run whatever GUI applications you want.

The CentOS machine does not need a display to do this (but it does of course need firefox and all of its dependencies to be installed), YOUR MACHINE and YOUR X SERVER are the display for the X applications you launch.

Manashb18 · 11-25-2015, 12:24 AM

Thanx Timl, ssh -X user@10.1.2.33 firefox it is working fine. Even -no-remote is not required.
Agree with Suicidaleggroll, but suppose we need to execute GUI application on server through Jenkins. Then, is it possible without Xvfb.

suicidaleggroll · 11-25-2015, 08:40 AM

I have no experience with Jenkins, but it's exceedingly rare to find a GUI program that does not work with SSH X forwarding. The only time I've ever needed to use a virtual frame buffer was when I needed to launch a program with a GUI splash screen automatically on boot without anybody logging into the machine.