How do I run Selenium in Xvfb?

You can use PyVirtualDisplay (a Python wrapper for Xvfb) to run headless WebDriver tests.

#!/usr/bin/env pythonfrom pyvirtualdisplay import Displayfrom selenium import webdriverdisplay = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))display.start()# now Firefox will run in a virtual display. # you will not see the browser.browser = webdriver.Firefox()browser.get('http://www.google.com')print browser.titlebrowser.quit()display.stop()

more info

You can also use xvfbwrapper, which is a similar module (but has no external dependencies):

from xvfbwrapper import Xvfbvdisplay = Xvfb()vdisplay.start()# launch stuff inside virtual display herevdisplay.stop()

or better yet, use it as a context manager:

from xvfbwrapper import Xvfbwith Xvfb() as xvfb:    # launch stuff inside virtual display here.    # It starts/stops in this code block.

The easiest way is probably to use xvfb-run:

DISPLAY=:1 xvfb-run java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.0b3.jar

xvfb-run does the whole X authority dance for you, give it a try!

open a terminal and run this command xhost +. This commands needs to be run every time you restart your machine. If everything works fine may be you can add this to startup commands

Also make sure in your /etc/environment file there is a line

export DISPLAY=:0.0 

And then, run your tests to see if your issue is resolved.

All please note the comment from sardathrion below before using this.