Troubleshooting & FAQ

Troubleshooting & FAQ#

This page covers common issues encountered while setting up or running tests within the ArgoBEAST framework.

Browser & Environment Issues#

Firefox on Ubuntu 24.04+ (Snap Sandboxing)#

Symptom: Tests fail to launch Firefox with errors such as Binary is not a Firefox executable, Profile not found, or WebDriverException: Service geckodriver unexpectedly exited.

Cause: Ubuntu 24.04 installs Firefox as a Snap package by default. Snap’s strict security confinement prevents GeckoDriver from accessing the necessary system directories (like /tmp) to initialise a testing profile.

Resolution: To bypass the sandbox without uninstalling your system browser, instruct Selenium Manager to provision a standalone, non-sandboxed version of Firefox for automation.

Add this environment variable to your shell (e.g., ~/.bashrc) or your CI/CD environment:

# Forces Selenium to download a managed browser binary to ~/.cache/selenium
export SE_FORCE_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD=true

Distribution Compatibility (Mint, Debian, Arch)#

On distributions where Firefox is installed via native package managers (like apt on Mint or pacman on Arch) rather than Snap, ArgoBEAST typically works without extra configuration.

However, using SE_FORCE_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD=true is recommended for teams to ensure all contributors are running the exact same browser version regardless of their OS.

WebDriver Management#

Automatic Driver Provisioning#

ArgoBEAST relies on Selenium Manager (built into Selenium 4.11+) to handle driver binaries. You generally do not need to manualy download chromedriver or geckodriver.

If drivers fail to download: * Proxy Settings: If you are behind a corporate firewall, ensure HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY are set in your environment so the manager can reach the binary repositories. * Permissions: Ensure the user running the tests has write access to the ~/.cache/selenium directory.

Reporting & Execution#

Reports Not Generating#

ArgoBEAST uses Allure for test reporting. The logic for report generation is managed internally by the framework’s core hooks. If your reports are not generating after a run, it is almost certainly due to missing dependencies.

Resolution: 1. Check Allure Installation: Ensure you have the Allure command-line tool installed on your system path.

  • On Ubuntu/Mint: sudo apt install allure (or via npm/homebrew).

  • Verify with: allure --version.

  1. Python Dependency: Ensure the allure-behave formatter is installed in your Python environment:

      pip install allure-behave

Or if using **uv** for dependency management:

    uv add allure-behave

  2. Execution Command: Ensure you are running your tests with the correct formatter flag to output the results to the results directory:

    behave -f allure_behave.formatter:AllureFormatter -o %allure_result_folder%

Note: If you are using the ArgoBEAST CLI to initiate runs, these flags are typically handled for you, provided Allure is present on the system.

Standardising Team Environments#

To prevent “it works on my machine” issues across different Linux distributions, it is best practice to standardise the browser source. You can create a simple setup script for contributors:

#!/bin/bash
# Standardise ArgoBEAST environment
export SE_FORCE_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD=true
echo "Environment configured for ArgoBEAST."