Karma can't capture PhantomJS - node.js

Question

We've set up a Jenkins CI server running Karma targeting PhantomJS. We're running our tests through Grunt. Jenkins, Grunt, and Phantom are all running correctly, and Karma seems to start up fine, but Karma can't capture Phantom. Our scripts run locally (OSX) just fine. The same error exists running via bash or through Jenkins:
Running "karma:jenkins-unit" (karma) task
[2013-07-03 11:03:12.168] [WARN] config - urlRoot normalized to "/__karma/"
DEBUG [reporter]: Using reporter "dots".
DEBUG [reporter]: Using reporter "junit".
DEBUG [reporter]: Using reporter "coverage".
INFO [karma]: Karma server started at http://localhost:8084/__karma/
INFO [launcher]: Starting browser PhantomJS
DEBUG [launcher]: Creating temp dir at /tmp/testacular-7720703
DEBUG [launcher]: phantomjs /tmp/testacular-7720703/capture.js
INFO [karma]: To run via this server, use "karma run --runner-port 9104"
...
WARN [launcher]: PhantomJS have not captured in 60000 ms, killing.
DEBUG [launcher]: Process PhantomJS exitted with code 0
DEBUG [launcher]: Cleaning temp dir /tmp/testacular-7720703
INFO [launcher]: Trying to start PhantomJS again.
DEBUG [launcher]: Creating temp dir at /tmp/testacular-7720703
DEBUG [launcher]: phantomjs /tmp/testacular-7720703/capture.js
WARN [launcher]: PhantomJS have not captured in 60000 ms, killing.
DEBUG [launcher]: Process PhantomJS exitted with code 0
DEBUG [launcher]: Cleaning temp dir /tmp/testacular-7720703
INFO [launcher]: Trying to start PhantomJS again.
DEBUG [launcher]: Creating temp dir at /tmp/testacular-7720703
DEBUG [launcher]: phantomjs /tmp/testacular-7720703/capture.js
WARN [launcher]: PhantomJS have not captured in 60000 ms, killing.
DEBUG [launcher]: Process PhantomJS exitted with code 0
DEBUG [karma]: PhantomJS failed to capture, aborting the run.
DEBUG [launcher]: Disconnecting all browsers
DEBUG [launcher]: Killing PhantomJS
DEBUG [launcher]: Cleaning temp dir /tmp/testacular-7720703
Warning: Task "karma:jenkins-unit" failed. Use --force to continue.
Our server is CentOS 6.4.
Here are the versions we have running:
grunt-cli v0.1.9
grunt v0.4.1
node 0.10.12 and 0.8.25.
phantomjs 1.9.1
karma 0.8.6
Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Use polling instead of sockets and absolute paths instead of relative paths in the karma.conf.js configuration file to ensure the directory structure is being traversed correctly and the client/server connection has no external dependencies:
module.exports = function(config)
{
var absolute_root = process.cwd() + '/';
config.set
(
{
// https://npmjs.org/browse/keyword/karma-adapter
frameworks: ['jasmine'],
// list of files
files:
[
absolute_root + 'test/Spec/**/*.js',
absolute_root + 'js/*.js',
absolute_root + '../libs/jquery.js'
],
usePolling: true,
transports: ['xhr-polling', 'jsonp-polling'],
browsers: ['PhantomJS']
}
);
};
References
Karma is not able to run test cases on phantomJS
Karma doesn't exit properly when using public api with the finish callback
AngularJS + Socket.IO + karma not working in karma 0.8.5
Karma Runner Hangs Indefinitely
Preprocessors not running in Jenkins(Linux)
"basePath" is relative to "C:\" instead of config file
Karma config.js
Istanbul/coverage reporter generate LCOV file with relative path for SF parameter instead of absolute path

Answer 2

In my case adding
transports: ['xhr-polling', 'jsonp-polling']
to karma.conf.js was sufficient. The real problem was a very old version of karma (0.12). Now with 1.4. I don't need CPU consuming polling.