Running Selenium Server & ChromeDriver as a Windows Service

Question

So that we may perform front-to-back web UI testing, we are using Selenium and ChromeDriver to automate page loads / interaction as part of our testing pack.

This

Answer 1

My preferred solution to this problem (and my default choice for running Selenium Grid as a service) is to use a simple tool called AlwaysUp. It has a free 30 day trial to try it out.

What to do:

• Download AlwaysUp
• Configure AlwaysUp to start the Selenium Grid node on startup
• Configure AlwaysUp to run the Selenium node as a specific user (not the default System user)

This way the the node will run as a service, survive machine restarts and work with the latest version Chrome.

If the user account you use to login to the machine is different from the user account you specify to run the node as a service then you will not see the browsers pop up on the desktop as they are running in a different user session. The end result is that it is almost identical to running as a normal service but gets round the Session 0 issue.