Can I force a firefox page refresh from linux console

Question

This is the Linux version of this question. Does anyone have a method for forcing a page refresh on firefox from the command-line?

Answer 1

You can use xdotool for automation. Install on Ubuntu with

sudo aptitude install xdotool

Then you can search for windows and send keys or mouse events, see man xdotool for the full documentation. I use following script on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS during development:

WID=`xdotool search --name "Mozilla Firefox" | head -1`
xdotool windowactivate $WID
xdotool key F5

See also the xdotool project site and my full blog post.

Answer 2

Have a look here. There is no remote reload-function described. Maybe the site is out-dated and you will find something while browsing through the mentioned *.cpp files. Or you add the function by your-self. The basics to handle such remote-calls seem to be already in Firefox.

Answer 3

The best solution I've found so far..

Install the Firefox Remote Control plugin from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remote-control/

Configure it, enable it (use the icon).

And reload for example with the following command:

echo reload | nc -c localhost 32000

Answer 4

As mentioned elsewhere, you can also use the xvkbd tool as in the following:

$ xvkbd -window Firefox -text "\Cr"