Create A Firefox Slave For Jenkins In Digital Ocean

To create a jenkins slave with firefox, a $5 a month droplet from Digital Ocean is more than enough to run automated tests.  If you need to set up a Jenkins master, feel free to check out my instructions in github.  

For this setup, I used Ubuntu 12.04.4 x64 as my linux kernel.  Once the droplet is created, ssh into the box and follow the instructions below.

Installing Firefox on Ubuntu

$  apt-get update

$  apt-get install xvfb firefox imagemagick

Additional fonts to install for xvfb

$  apt-get install xfonts-100dpi  xfonts-75dpi  xfonts-scalable  xfonts-cyrillic

$  apt-get install msttcorefonts cabextract x-ttcidfont-conf

Now, let's verify the installation.

Enable Xvfb
$  Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1280x960x24 &

Open Firefox and visit the homepage

$  DISPLAY=:1 firefox http://www.sqaessentials.com &

Take a screenshot

$  DISPLAY=:1 import -window root -crop 1264x948+0+0 -resize 200x150 -quality 90 ~/screenshot.jpg

Download the screenshot and you should see the browser open to www.sqaessentials.com.

The machine is now ready to add to your Jenkins infrastructure.  

---