Text is blacked out when taking a firefox screenshot running headless with xvfb

Question

I have a jenkins setup on amazon ec2 and everything is running fine except for a tiny issue with Selenium. Every time I run the whole suite of tests (~30 min), Selenium gets stuck on a test. I've take a screenshot at that moment and it seems that there is an alert on the screen, but the alert text is all blacked out.

I've run xvfb, started selenium, then taken my screen capture with xwd and converted that image with imagemagick.

I've scoured the internet and have no clue.

Answer 1

Figured it out. Turns out that it's a font thing. I've run the steps indicated below and now I can read the text. It's still on a dark green background, but the text is readable.

On amazon ec2 ubuntu instance need to:

1) enable multiverse for apt-get

• Open /etc/apt/sources.list with any editor
• On ec2 it seems the multiverse isn't present so copied these lines into the file and saved
  • deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse
  • deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse
  • deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse
  • deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse

2) sudo apt-get update

3) sudo apt-get -y install x-ttcidfont-conf cabextract ttf-mscorefonts-installer

• this will bring up shell gui, use arrow down, tab, and enter to navigate
• accept EULA

4) sudo dpkg-reconfigure x-ttcidfont-conf - choose freetype fonts