Firefox crashes on close/quit - Pytest Selenium with RemoteWebDriver

Question

I searched and found very similar mentions in older questions from several months ago which seemed to suggest problem should have been fixed by now, but it is still occurring for me.

• Pytest on my Linux server - Build info: version: '3.0.1', revision: '1969d75', time: '2016-10-18 09:48:19 -0700'
• Firefox on my remote Win7 laptop - browserVersion 50.0.2
• Geckodriver on my remote Win7 laptop - geckodriver-v0.11.1-win64 . System info: host: 'XXXXXXXXX', ip: 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX', os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.8.0_111' Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver
• Geckodriver on my Linux server in my $PATH - geckodriver-v0.11.1-linux64.tar

My pytest+selenium session opens a browser window on my remote laptop OK, and does everything properly until the test completes. At that point, Firefox crashes and the remote Geckodriver reports "[Child 1688] ###!!! ABORT: Aborting on channel error.: file c:/builds/moz2_slave/m-rel-w32-00000000000000000000/build/src/ipc/glue/MessageChannel.cpp, line 2056".

I would appreciate any & all suggestions or guidance so Firefox does not end up crashing. Thank you very much.

Malayoindonesian

your windows 7 OS is of 32-bit (x86), but using geckodriver of 64 bit. probably that could the reason. download 32-bit version of geckodriver and try. – Kaffraria

Thanks very much Naveen, that is a very interesting observation. Actually, my WIn7 OS is 64-bit (I checked in Control Panel-System just to be 100% sure) so I wonder why it is reporting os.arch x86. Anyhow, just as an experiment, I temporarily susbstituted the 32-bit WIndows geckodriver v0.11.1 and tried it again but got the same outcome :-( – Malayoindonesian

Dug into this a bit further...my JVM is 32-bit as is my Firefox browser. (This is a company-provided laptop, and evidentally they want to run the 32-bit versions of FF and IE for some reason, so JVM is also 32-bit flavor). – Malayoindonesian

As the geckodriver name suggests the bit version is related to windows os. If 64-bit geckodriver is used, first it will check fir 64-bit Firefox, if not installed, then launches 32-bit Firefox. (citation required). This is my observation that I had earlier.as geckodriver still in in development phase, can be a bugbas well. Try to simulate in other environments and confirm the issue. As a workaround you can use catch the exception instead of throwing it and handle it for yourself. – Kaffraria

Thanks again Naveen. Appreciate your comments and suggestions. – Malayoindonesian