PhantomJS sometimes crashes

I have been successfully running a fairly comprehensive suite of Protractor e2e tests using Chrome on OSX (Mavericks: 10.9.2).

We have a technical requirement to run these tests headlessly, so I swapped in PhantomJS instead of Chrome, and after 20 seconds (consistently), I get the following error:

Runner Process Exited With Error Code: 8
Fatal error: protractor exited with code: 1

Now for some more detailed information.

Here is the full error output from the grunt task I am running:

Running "protractor:phantomjs" (protractor) task
------------------------------------
PID: 9678 (capability: phantomjs #1)
------------------------------------
Starting selenium standalone server...
Selenium standalone server started at http://192.168.1.111:4444/wd/hub
/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:1562
throw error;
^
UnknownError: null
at new bot.Error (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/atoms/error.js:109:18)
at Object.bot.response.checkResponse (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/atoms/response.js:106:9)
at /path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/webdriver.js:135:24
at /path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/goog/base.js:1178:15
at webdriver.promise.ControlFlow.runInNewFrame_ (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:1455:20)
at notify (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:328:12)
at notifyAll (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:297:7)
at fulfill (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:402:7)
at /path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/goog/base.js:1178:15
at webdriver.promise.ControlFlow.runInNewFrame_ (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/promise.js:1455:20)
==== async task ====
    WebDriver.createSession()
at Function.webdriver.WebDriver.acquireSession_ (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/webdriver.js:132:49)
at Function.webdriver.WebDriver.createSession (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver/webdriver.js:111:30)
at Builder.build (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/builder.js:105:20)
at LocalDriverProvider.getDriver (/path/node_modules/protractor/lib/driverProviders/local.dp.js:128:9)
at /path/node_modules/protractor/lib/runner.js:327:35
at _fulfilled (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:797:54)
at self.promiseDispatch.done (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:826:30)
at Promise.promise.promiseDispatch (/path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:759:13)
at /path/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:573:44
    [launcher] Runner Process Exited With Error Code: 8
>>
Fatal error: protractor exited with code: 1

Package versions:

"grunt-protractor-runner": "~0.2.3"
"protractor": "0.19.0"
"selenium-webdriver": "~2.40"

Contents of protractor.conf.js:

exports.config = {
    seleniumServerJar: '../../node_modules/protractor/selenium/selenium-server-standalone-2.39.0.jar',
    seleniumPort: 4444,
    seleniumArgs: ['-browserTimeout=60'],
    specs: [
        '../e2e/utils.js',
        '../e2e/**/*-suite.js'
    ],
    capabilities: {
        browserName: 'phantomjs',
        'phantomjs.binary.path': './node_modules/karma-phantomjs-launcher/node_modules/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs',
        'phantomjs.cli.args': ['--debug=true', '--webdriver', '--webdriver-logfile=webdriver.log', '--webdriver-loglevel=DEBUG']
    },
    baseUrl: 'http://localhost:9292',
    rootElement: 'body',
    onPrepare: function () {
        require('jasmine-reporters');
        jasmine.getEnv().addReporter(new jasmine.JUnitXmlReporter('test/results/', true, true));
    },
    framework: 'jasmine',
    jasmineNodeOpts: {
        onComplete: function () {
        },
        isVerbose: true,
        showColors: true,
        includeStackTrace: true,
        defaultTimeoutInterval: 30000
    }
};

I have tried installing version ~1.9.7-1 of the phantomjs package independently of the one that protractor depends upon, and updating the phantomjs.binary.path property in protractor.conf.js, but I get the same result.

After spending far too long debugging the JS to try to isolate where the error is occurring, I know that it is falling over in runner.js.

Specifically in Runner.prototype.runJasmine_(), the anonymous function passed to webdriver.promise.controlFlow().execute() here is never executed.

Can anyone help?

Let me know if you need more information.

Matt

[NickTomlin]

I’ll go ahead and close the loop here because upgrading to PhantomJS 2 resolves this 👏 👏 🎊 🎺

I’d also like to restate what Julie mentioned earlier:

Protractor does NOT test against PhantomJS in our CI environment, and while we’ll try to address issues and look at pull requests that improve PhantomJS problems, it is not a high issue for the core team to work on personally.

If anyone encounters additional issues with Phantom, please try to raise an issue on the Phantom queue and resolve it there. Thanks, y’all are awesome! 😺

[heroandtn3]

Yes, this is fixed by upgrade to PhantomJS 2 https://github.com/detro/ghostdriver/issues/328#issuecomment-44309690