Running tests on Jenkins: TypeError: Cannot read property 'message' of undefined

[Lukas-Kullmann]

When running our tests on our Jenkins, I get an error

/var/lib/****/node_modules/browserstack-local/lib/Local.js:61
          callback(new LocalError(data['message']['message']));
                                                 ^

TypeError: Cannot read property 'message' of undefined
    at /var/lib/****/node_modules/browserstack-local/lib/Local.js:61:50
    at ChildProcess.exithandler (child_process.js:267:7)
    at emitTwo (events.js:126:13)
    at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:214:7)
    at maybeClose (internal/child_process.js:925:16)
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:209:5)

The issue here is, that the response of the childProcess.execFile in the browserstack-local package is empty. error is null and stdout and stderr are both empty strings. That's why data is an empty object.

I tried investigating what is going on, but I did not find a solution.

The binaryArgs for our run were:

[ '--daemon',
  'start',
  '--log-file',
  '/dev/null',
  '--key',
  '****',
  '--local-identifier',
  1523874577640,
  '--enable-logging-for-api' ]

If I try to provide a logfile, it will be empty.

We do not use a proxy.

If I run the tests locally on my machine (with the same credentials), I do not get an error. The tests start normally.

Did anybody ever have a similar issue or does anybody have an idea what might be going on? Any help would be appreciated!

[AndreyBelym]

Hi @Lukas-Kullmann! Looks like it's a problem with browserstack-local-nodejs package. I would recommend you to create an issue there.

For debugging purposes, I suggest you to check exit code of the Browserstack Local process, if it's not zero, likely it's a problem with permissions or something, check if binary at $HOME/.browserstack/BrowserStackLocal has executable flag. If it won't help, try to connect to your Jenkins slave after all packages have been installed, and invoke BrowserStackLocal binary manually.

[Lukas-Kullmann]

Hi @AndreyBelym! Thanks for the response!
We actually could nail the proplem down. We actually need to set the parallel-runs flag to some value to be able to start the server. Currently this is not possible with this provider.

I will fix it and open a PR. :)

[AndreyBelym]

That's interesting. Sorry for casting you @pulkitsharma07, but could you please clarify if it is required to use this flag when running multiple builds, or I should contact the Browserstack Support for that? It's my shame that I've missed that flag, but everything was working fine for us before. The flag affects a number of BrowserStackLocal forked process, and judging by different flag's values, BrowserStackLocal might spawn up to spawns ($PARALLEL_RUNS - 1) / 10, handicapped with 9 processes in total. So looks like the default value for --parallel-runs can be any number starting from 31 and ending with 40.

[AndreyBelym]

@Lukas-Kullmann I've published testcafe-browser-provider-browserstack@1.3.0 with the fix, thank you so much! 🎉

[Lukas-Kullmann]

I thank you so much, that was super fast - lightning speed! :-)

[shermaneric]

Hey there. I'm sorry to bump this old thread. I'm running into a similar issue here. Not sure if I'm doing something grossly wrong. Thanks!

[AndreyBelym]

Hi @shermaneric, have you tried to set the BROWSERSTACK_PARALLEL_RUNS environment variable?

[shermaneric]

Indeed. Here's the SO post. I'm attempting to run it out of the node alpine-7 container. Probably something limiting me there perhaps?

Thanks for the quick response!