Running Selenium Grid and a set of Remote control as NT services

Selenium has various projects that can be combined with each other to create a robust testing environment.

• Selenium IDE: a Firefox add-on to record and playback tests in Firefox.
• Selenium Remote Control: a client/server system to control web browsers locally or on other computers, using almost any programming language and testing framework.
• Selenium Grid: transparently distribute your tests on multiple machines so that you can run your tests in parallel, cutting down the time required for running in-browser test suites. In-browser tests are inherently slow, but since commodity hardware is insanely cheap nowadays there is no excuse for not running all these tests in parallel on multiple machines and dramatically speeding up your feedback cycle. .
• Selenium Core: JavaScript-based testing system.

Also there are Selenium projects specifically for Rails, Ruby & Eclipse!

Today I will show you how to make run some components of Selenium as Windows Services. I am using a Selenium HUB and 4 Selenium RC running all on the same server (while not recommended for performance reasons, it is the easiest setup)

In this small how to I provide you at the end of the article a ready to use Selenium Grid 0.7 zip file

Read more: Running Selenium Grid and a set of Remote control as NT services

TeamCity 5.0 now available

Amazon EC2 and Virtual Agents

Take avdantage of cloud computing with TeamCity by putting Build Agents on Amazon EC2. After your Build Agents' AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) are registered, the TeamCity server will account for those virtual machines in its build scheduling and will automatically do a suspend/resume job on them, based on the load and build queue status.

Better Support for Maven

Version 5.0 has many Maven support improvements under the hood. These include the creation of Maven-based build configurations (only the URL to the POM file is needed), the visualization of various project data gathered from POM, and a new type of dependency trigger - Maven artifact trigger. This type of trigger starts a build each time the specified Maven artifact changes.

Build Configuration Templates

Templates can save a lot of manual work when you need to define a number of duplicate or very similar build configurations. Now you can create a template with the common (shared) settings, and then inherit any number of build configs from this template. You can also extract a template from any of your existing build configurations.

Issue Tracker Integration

How often do you see comments like this: "TW-3431 fixed"? How about a little more detail on the issue at hand? The issue tracker integration provides an in-place bug title, direct navigation to the issue, and other productivity goodies. It is currently available for Jira, Bugzilla and JetBrains YouTrack out of the box, but can easily be extended to other systems via plugins

Command Line Tool for Personal Builds

Previously, if you weren't using Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA or Visual Studio, you were out of luck for missing one of the most important TeamCity features - Remote Run and Pre-Tested Commits. But things have changed. As the name suggests, now you can initiate the building of your local changes remotely on the server - from the local command line. No IDEs required.

Many Other Improvements

Including:

• Per-test responsibilities
• Build artifacts promotion
• Dedicated change details/status page
• Incremental update of the build log
• Project archiving
• Backup & Restore for easier TeamCity maintenance. Backup can be started from the UI or from the command line; Restore and Migration can be started from the command line only. Command line backup does not require stopping TeamCity if an external database is used.
• Audit of user actions
• Coverage support for .NET & Java. Based on IntelliJ IDEA coverage engine for Java and on NCover
  (ver 1, ver 3) or PartCover for .NET.
• Git & Mercurial support now bundled with TeamCity
• Remote Run for Git from IntelliJ IDEA & Eclipse
• Support for Cucumber, Shoulda, Test-Spec in Rake runner
• TeamCity IntelliJ IDEA plugin now works with IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition and RubyMine.
  

  Download TeamCity 5.0 (free 60-day trial). See also complete release notes

Install Atlassian Confluence in 15 minutes

In this small post, you will learn how to install Atlassian Confluence in no more than 15 minutes. It do not replace the online installations manual (The Confluence Installation Guide is for people who are installing Confluence for the first time. Check the requirements and supported platforms, then download and install Confluence), but mainly complement it, with some of the best Linux practices (ADDED points).

How to install Atlassian Confluence in 15 minutes

Create user and user group

ADDED: Better run these web applications with their own user group and user for more security…This is not required, but follow Linux best practices, thus highly recommended.

The groupadd command creates a new group account using the values specified on the command line and the default values from the system.

# groupadd confluence

The useradd command allow a super user or root to create a new user or updates default new user information.

# useradd -g confluence -c 'confluence user for confluence' -m confluence

Be that user, for all next operations

# su – confluence

You are now in the new home of user confluence.

/home/confluence /#

Install Confuence

Get the latest standalone version

# wget http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/downloads/binary/confluence-3.1.1-std.tar.gz

Unpack it

# tar –xvf confluence-3.1.1-std.tar.gz

ADDED: To avoid having version number and make software updates easier, create a symbolic link (symlink). This will avoid to have in all your scripts a reference to the version number, thus keeping them more or less generic.

# ln –s /home/confluence/confluence-3.1.1-std /home/confluence/confluence

Customization of profile

ADDED: I do not like to type too much, that why all server where I went are full of aliases. This help also other developers to locate quickly interesting functions on the system.

# cd

Open the Bashrc and put at the end

# vi .bashrc

At least these 4 alias, you are free to define more. Think also that they may be seen as documentation.

alias rel='cd /home/confluence/confluence/'
alias logs='tail -F /home/confluence/confluence/logs/*'
alias cstart='/home/confluence/confluence/bin/startup.sh'
alias cstop='/home/confluence/confluence/bin/shutdown.sh'

To make you life easier, you’ll be able now to start and stop Confluence by issuing a cstart or cstop, watch logs by typing logs

Prepare database configuration

Go to confluence home

# cd

If you are using MySQL (most of the time you are), you’ll have to get the driver from internet due to licensing issues

# wget http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/mysql/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.zip

Install unzip if not available on your system

# apt-get install unzip

Unpack drivers in current directory

# unzip mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.zip

Search the driver file. I do this to avoid searching or typing for it

# find /home/confluence/ -name mysql*.jar

This should return something like mysql-connector-java-5.1.10/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10-bin.jar.

Copy this drivers into tomcat shared lib, aka into /home/confluence/confluence/lib

# cp mysql-connector-java-5.1.10/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10-bin.jar /home/confluence/confluence/lib

Create new database schema and user

# mysql –u root –p
mysql> create database confluence character set utf8;
mysql> CREATE USER 'confluence'@'localhost'
        IDENTIFIED BY 'xxxxxxxxxx';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON confluence
        TO 'confluence'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql>  FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Configure Confluence to connect to this new database

Open /home/confluence/confluence/conf/server.xml and add in yellow the configuration for your database.

username="confluence"
password="xxxxxxxxxx"
driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?autoReconnect=true&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF8"
maxActive="20"
maxIdle="7"
validationQuery="select 1" />

Start Confluence

Issue a

# cstart; logs

and check logs to see if there is no fatal error occurring before visiting your browser http://yourserverIP:8081/confluence to continue installation.

Scripts (optional)

Create a new init.d script for Confluence

ADDED: Are for starting and stopping easily Confluence, in a standard way. This is something missing currently in the manuals. Here I present you maybe the most basic script ever made, but its purpose is just to be called later on by a rc.d as you will see later.

# vi /etc/init.d/confluence

And place inside the following

 
#!/bin/bash 

RETVAL=0 
NORMAL_PORT=8009 

start() { 
su -l confluence -c '/home/confluence/confluence/bin/startup.sh' 
} 

stop() { 
su -l confluence -c '/home/confluence/confluence/bin/shutdown.sh' 
} 

status() { 
echo "not implemented" 
} 

findShutdownPort() { 
SHUTDOWN_PORT=`netstat -vatn|grep LISTEN|grep $NORMAL_PORT|wc –l` 
} 

case "$1" in 
start) 
start 
;; 
stop) 
stop 
;; 
restart) 
stop 
start 
;; 
redebug) 
stop 
debug 
;; 
status) 
status 
;; 
*) 
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|redebug|status}" 
exit 1 
esac 
exit $RETVAL

# chown u+x /etc/init.d/confluence

Rc.d scripts

ADDED: This will start automatically Confluence in runlevel 5 if machine if ever restarted

# cd /etc/rc5.d

Create a symbolic link to the Init.d script for starting

# ln -s ../init.d/confluence S20confluence

And stopping

# ln -s ../init.d/confluence k20confluence

Update JetBrains TeamCity in one click

  A small script developed to upgrade TeamCity with no or less effort! a very simple script, easily extensible.

“TeamCity is a continuous integration and build management system. With TeamCity, you can set up a build server within minutes and enjoy out of the box continuous unit testing, code quality analysis, and early reporting on build problems — even without leaving your favorite IDE. TeamCity offers a gentle learning curve, so you can quickly improve your release management practices by gradually adopting its advanced features and capabilities.”

Limitations

This script only work if

• You run TeamCity using the standalone package provided at http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/download/index.html#linux under Linux
• You use MYSQL as an external DB
• You must run it as root (because getting the latest software with wget may not otherwise be possible)
• This script is not endorsed by JetBrains nor official.
• GNU/GPL version 3, use at your own risk, provided as IS

It must be safe to use, as

• It backup first your database
• it archive your existing TeamCity installation with a timestamp
• it also copy any customizations (server.xml, agent build.properties) you have made to the new installation
• It download automatically and extract teamcity

Usage

# ./updateTeamCity.sh newVersionNumber installPathHome

example:

/home/teamcity > ./updateTeamCity.sh 4.5.4 /home/teamcity

Output of the script

stopping current TeamCity at /home/teamcity/TeamCity
done!
Read database settings from database.properties
Moving current TeamCity /home/teamcity/TeamCity to /home/teamcity/TeamCity.20093830
done!
Saving database to file system at /home/teamcity/TeamCity.20093830/teamcity.sql
done!
getting the latest version at http://download.jetbrains.com/teamcity/TeamCity-4.5.4.tar.gz
done!
Unpacking new version
done! 
Copying previous customizations
done!
Copying required 3rd party librairies
done!
Copying local agent build.properties to new TeamCity
done!
Starting new TeamCity
done!

Don’t expect more at the moment, it has been created to make the update of TeamCity faster for ME now. Feedback is appreciated, and improvement/ideas are always welcomed.

GET THE SCRIPT updateTeamCity HERE