Updated Chrome/Firefox Agent

[pmeenan]

The Chrome 16 update (and Firefox 8) changed some of the permissions that the browser extension we use needed to ask for so if you are seeing an issue on a private instance where Chrome launches but doesn't start testing you should update the agent to see if that solves the issue.

You can get the latest wptdriver agent here: http://www.webpagetest.org/work/update/wptupdate.zip

You can install the update manually or by using the built-in agent update mechanism.

To update it manually:

• Make sure there is no wptupdate.zip and wptupdate.ini in your work/update folder on the server
• Stop wptdriver
• Unzip the contents of wptupdate.zip over the directory where the old wptdriver was running from
• Re-start wptdriver.exe
  

To use the update mechanism:

• Copy wptupdate.zip to the work/update folder on your server
• Extract wptupdate.ini from wptupdate.zip and place it in the work/update folder next to the zip file
  

I'm not quite ready for a 2.6 release yet which is why it is coming as a stand-alone agent update.

Thanks,

-Pat

[nilskuhn]

Hi,
thanks for the hotfix, I was just wondering about chrome-test-failure.
Would you suggest to disable auto-updating of chrome-browser on agents to secure stable testing? Or is an occurrence of souch incompatibilities unlikely in nearer future?

[pmeenan]

I think after Chrome 17 is will be a lot less likely (next update). We were using some experimental APIs that migrated to the mainstream and the permissions requirements changed. With Chrome 17 I believe all the APIs we use are production ones so there should not be any more changes like that.

With how frequently Chrome updates, I think it would be a LOT more effort to keep up with releases if you disable the automatic updates. I'm actually trying to figure out a good way to auto-update Firefox as well because of the 6-week cycles.

One thing that may help that I'm going to look into is a way for private installs to automatically pull agent updates from the public webpagetest server. Still, that may be riskier than some people want to run.

[raybero]

I followed the instructions above to install the wpt update. But Chrome still just starts up on a request but does not load the page. My version of Chrome is 16.0.912.63.

I believe there were no errors during the update process. All of the wpt files have an updated date (12/21 or 12/22) and that includes the extension files.

Something else I should do or check? Thanks.

[pmeenan]

When chrome is launched, can you check chrome://extensions and make sure that the WebPagetest extension is loaded?

[raybero]

(12-24-2011 01:00 AM)pmeenan Wrote:  When chrome is launched, can you check chrome://extensions and make sure that the WebPagetest extension is loaded?

It is loaded and enabled.

[raybero]

(12-24-2011 02:44 PM)raybero Wrote:  

(12-24-2011 01:00 AM)pmeenan Wrote:  When chrome is launched, can you check chrome://extensions and make sure that the WebPagetest extension is loaded?

It is loaded and enabled.

Chrome is still not running the plugin. Should I just be waiting for the new version of WebPageTest? Or is there something else I can try?

[pmeenan]

I don't think waiting would help because the same code works everywhere else I have tried it so we don't have any fixes that would be targeting it. I may have to send you a debug build of wpthook that logs a bunch of information.

Any chance the agent update reverted? If you updated manually and the old automatic update files are still in work/update then the agent would have re-installed the old version automatically.

[SlexAxton]

I am also seeing this behavior. I ran the update on one of the AMIs, rebooted, and chrome just stops at the about:blank page and eventually times out.

One thing I noticed is that after I run an update (either manual or with the updater) my wtpdriver.exe file is 247kb, but after I run it it stops, replaces itself with a 230kb file, and starts again. Is that normal?

[pmeenan]

Check the work/update folder on your server. The server is probably delivering the older version as an "update" (it will deliver whatever is in the folder as long as the versions don't match - including downgrading).