WebDriverJS with PhantomJS works on OSX, but not on Linux - linux

Question

I'm using a combination of:
Selenium Standalone - https://github.com/vvo/selenium-standalone
WebDriverJS - https://github.com/webdriverio/webdriverio
Medium's PhantomJS NPM wrapper - https://github.com/Medium/phantomjs
Each component works fine separately, and when I run:
var client = webdriverjs.remote({
desiredCapabilities: {
browserName: 'phantomjs',
'phantomjs.binary.path': '/path-to/node_modules/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs'
},
logLevel: 'silent'
});
client.init();
It works fine on OSX/Mac, but on our CI Linux server (Ubuntu), I get the following error message;
PhantomJS is launching GhostDriver...
Unable to open file '/path/to/phantomjsdriver.log'
Before the ineveitable Java stacktrace...
Driver info: driver.version: unknown
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(FutureTask.java:222)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:83)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultSession.execute(DefaultSession.java:176)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultSession.<init>(DefaultSession.java:112)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultSession.createSession(DefaultSession.java:89)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DefaultDriverSessions.newSession(DefaultDriverSessions.java:110)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.handler.NewSession.handle(NewSession.java:57)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.handler.NewSession.handle(NewSession.java:1)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.rest.ResultConfig.handle(ResultConfig.java:112)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.JsonHttpCommandHandler.handleRequest(JsonHttpCommandHandler.java:173)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DriverServlet.handleRequest(DriverServlet.java:200)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DriverServlet.doPost(DriverServlet.java:162)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:727)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.server.DriverServlet.service(DriverServlet.java:128)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820)
at org.openqa.jetty.jetty.servlet.ServletHolder.handle(ServletHolder.java:428)
at org.openqa.jetty.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.dispatch(ServletHandler.java:680)
at org.openqa.jetty.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.handle(ServletHandler.java:571)
at org.openqa.jetty.http.HttpContext.handle(HttpContext.java:1526)
at org.openqa.jetty.http.HttpContext.handle(HttpContext.java:1479)
at org.openqa.jetty.http.HttpServer.service(HttpServer.java:920)
at org.openqa.jetty.http.HttpConnection.service(HttpConnection.java:820)
at org.openqa.jetty.http.HttpConnection.handleNext(HttpConnection.java:986)
at org.openqa.jetty.http.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:837)
at org.openqa.jetty.http.SocketListener.handleConnection(SocketListener.java:243)
at org.openqa.jetty.util.ThreadedServer.handle(ThreadedServer.java:358)
at org.openqa.jetty.util.ThreadPool$PoolThread.run(ThreadPool.java:537)
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
&
Driver info: driver.version: PhantomJSDriver
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:590)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.startSession(RemoteWebDriver.java:241)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:127)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:140)
at org.openqa.selenium.phantomjs.PhantomJSDriver.<init>(PhantomJSDriver.java:110)
at org.openqa.selenium.phantomjs.PhantomJSDriver.<init>(PhantomJSDriver.java:99)
... 14 more
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Timed out waiting for driver server to start.
I suspect a permissions issue, but wondered if anyone has run into this problem before.
At the very least, it would be great to work out exactly why this is working on Mac.

Answer 1

This file - phantomjsdriver.log - Can only be created by a user with file write permissions.
Executing the program as 'root' fixed the issue.