httplib.BadStatusLine: '' on Linux but not Mac

Question

This error has been under my skin for a few hours now. I decided to code up a separate project just to see if I can replicate it and I can, but ONLY on my server. This works on my Mac.

• Mac: OSX El Capitan 10.11.6

• Server: CentOS 7.2.1511

• Both have PhantomJS version: 2.1.1

• Python Mac: Python 2.7.11

• Python Server: 2.7.5

• Both have Selenium version: 2.53.0

Identical code ran on both:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.webdriver.common.desired_capabilities import DesiredCapabilities
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
import time

dcap = dict(DesiredCapabilities.PHANTOMJS)
dcap["phantomjs.page.settings.userAgent"] = "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.98 Safari/537.36"
dcap["phantomjs.page.customHeaders.accept"] = "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8"
dcap["phantomjs.page.customHeaders.Accept-Language"] = "en-US,en;q=0.8"
dcap["phantomjs.page.customHeaders.connection"] = "keep-alive"

driver = webdriver.PhantomJS(desired_capabilities=dcap)
driver.set_window_size(1120, 700)
driver.get("https://www.instagram.com/espn/")

while True:
    print len(driver.find_elements_by_css_selector("a[href*='/p/']"))
    driver.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);")
    try:
        loadMore = driver.find_element_by_link_text("Load more")
        loadMore.click()
    except NoSuchElementException:
        print "No such"
        driver.save_screenshot('none.png')

Mac output:

12
24
No such
24
No such
36
No such
48
No such
48
No such
60
No such
72
No such
84
# This goes until I end it

Server output:

12
24
No such
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "junk.py", line 27, in <module>
    driver.save_screenshot('none.png')
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 790, in get_screenshot_as_file
    png = self.get_screenshot_as_png()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 809, in get_screenshot_as_png
    return base64.b64decode(self.get_screenshot_as_base64().encode('ascii'))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 819, in get_screenshot_as_base64
    return self.execute(Command.SCREENSHOT)['value']
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 231, in execute
    response = self.command_executor.execute(driver_command, params)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/remote_connection.py", line 395, in execute
    return self._request(command_info[0], url, body=data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/remote_connection.py", line 463, in _request
    resp = opener.open(request, timeout=self._timeout)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 431, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 449, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 409, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1244, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1217, in do_open
    r = h.getresponse(buffering=True)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/httplib.py", line 1089, in getresponse
    response.begin()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/httplib.py", line 444, in begin
    version, status, reason = self._read_status()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/httplib.py", line 408, in _read_status
    raise BadStatusLine(line)
httplib.BadStatusLine: ''

Server output after removing the screenshot line:

12
24
No such
24
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "junk.py", line 23, in <module>
    loadMore = driver.find_element_by_link_text("Load more")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 314, in find_element_by_link_text
    return self.find_element(by=By.LINK_TEXT, value=link_text)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 744, in find_element
    {'using': by, 'value': value})['value']
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 231, in execute
    response = self.command_executor.execute(driver_command, params)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/remote_connection.py", line 395, in execute
    return self._request(command_info[0], url, body=data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/remote_connection.py", line 463, in _request
    resp = opener.open(request, timeout=self._timeout)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 431, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 449, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 409, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1244, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1217, in do_open
    r = h.getresponse(buffering=True)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/httplib.py", line 1089, in getresponse
    response.begin()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/httplib.py", line 444, in begin
    version, status, reason = self._read_status()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/httplib.py", line 408, in _read_status
    raise BadStatusLine(line)
httplib.BadStatusLine: ''

One related answer I found was here: Can't run PhantomJS in python via Selenium

So I installed Selenium 2.37 and it gave the same error.

I read this answer about the problem perhaps behind related to changing the headers, so I removed the headers by changing the driver to driver = webdriver.PhantomJS() and still get the same error.

I also installed 2.7.12 on the server, to see if there was a difference. Output was:

# python2.7 junk.py
12
24
No such
24
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "junk.py", line 29, in <module>
    loadMore = driver.find_element_by_link_text("Load more")
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 314, in find_element_by_link_text
    return self.find_element(by=By.LINK_TEXT, value=link_text)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 744, in find_element
    {'using': by, 'value': value})['value']
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 231, in execute
    response = self.command_executor.execute(driver_command, params)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/remote_connection.py", line 395, in execute
    return self._request(command_info[0], url, body=data)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/remote_connection.py", line 463, in _request
    resp = opener.open(request, timeout=self._timeout)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 429, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 447, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 407, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1228, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 1201, in do_open
    r = h.getresponse(buffering=True)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 1136, in getresponse
    response.begin()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 453, in begin
    version, status, reason = self._read_status()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 417, in _read_status
    raise BadStatusLine(line)
httplib.BadStatusLine: ''

Checking space on system. It's a brand new VPS, but still, to confirm:

Answer 1

EDIT 3

Add the following:

except httplib.BadStatusLine:
    pass

EDIT 2

Python WebDriver and phantomJs have a problem with keep_alive. This could be your problem. So add keep_alive=False as follows:

driver = webdriver.PhantomJS(desired_capabilities=dcap,keep_alive=False)

end edit

---

Add the following

import httplib
import socket

from selenium.webdriver.remote.command import Command

def get_status(driver):
    try:
        driver.execute(Command.STATUS)
        return "Alive"
    except (socket.error, httplib.CannotSendRequest):
        return "Dead"

Call get_status(driver) just before the save_screenshot statement and print the result. This will tell us if the driver has prematurely shutdown.

EDIT

Add the following after driver = webdriver.PhantomJS(desired_capabilities=dcap)

driver.implicitly_wait(10) #wait 10 seconds when doing a find_element before carrying on