TeamCity: PhantomJS have not captured in 60000 ms, killing

Question

I'm encountering an issue when running tests in my CI environment. The configuration works fine on MacOS 10.11.6 (El Capitan), with Node v6.0.0 / npm 3.8.6, but on a TeamCity 9.1.6 agent running Windows with Node v4.2.2 / npm 2.14.7, it fails miserably with an error of PhantomJS have not captured in 60000 ms.

Here's an example stacktrace on TeamCity:

[08:58:40][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.095:DEBUG [config]: autoWatch set to false, because of singleRun
[08:58:40][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.102:DEBUG [plugin]: Loading plugin karma-jasmine.
[08:58:40][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.107:DEBUG [plugin]: Loading plugin karma-chrome-launcher.
[08:58:40][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.121:DEBUG [plugin]: Loading plugin karma-firefox-launcher.
[08:58:40][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.128:DEBUG [plugin]: Loading plugin karma-phantomjs-launcher.
[08:58:40][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.263:DEBUG [web-server]: Instantiating middleware
[08:58:41][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.595:INFO [karma]: Karma v1.3.0 server started at http://localhost:9877/
[08:58:41][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.596:INFO [launcher]: Launching browser PhantomJS with unlimited concurrency
[08:58:41][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.616:INFO [launcher]: Starting browser PhantomJS
[08:58:41][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.618:DEBUG [temp-dir]: Creating temp dir at E:\TCA\3\temp\buildTmp\karma-47802965
[08:58:41][exec] 02 11 2016 08:58:41.631:DEBUG [launcher]: E:\TCA\3\work\f900f2fe23d6c9b0\Preview\node_modules\phantomjs-prebuilt\lib\phantom\bin\phantomjs E:\TCA\3\temp\buildTmp\karma-47802965/capture.js
[08:59:41][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:41.621:WARN [launcher]: PhantomJS have not captured in 60000 ms, killing.
[08:59:43][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:43.624:WARN [launcher]: PhantomJS was not killed in 2000 ms, sending SIGKILL.
[08:59:45][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:45.627:WARN [launcher]: PhantomJS was not killed by SIGKILL in 2000 ms, continuing.
[08:59:45][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:45.628:DEBUG [launcher]: Process PhantomJS exited with code -1
[08:59:45][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:45.629:DEBUG [temp-dir]: Cleaning temp dir E:\TCA\3\temp\buildTmp\karma-47802965
[08:59:45][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:45.637:DEBUG [launcher]: PhantomJS failed (timeout). Not restarting.
[08:59:45][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:45.638:DEBUG [karma]: Run complete, exiting.
[08:59:45][exec] 02 11 2016 08:59:45.639:DEBUG [launcher]: Disconnecting all browsers
[08:59:45][exec] Warning: Task "karma:unit" failed.  Use --force to continue.
[08:59:45][exec] 
[08:59:45][exec] Aborted due to warnings.
[08:59:45][exec] npm ERR! Test failed.  See above for more details.

Here's a snippet of package.json:

"devDependencies": {
    "bower": "latest",
    "grunt": "^1.0.1",
    "grunt-cli": "^1.2.0",
    "grunt-contrib-jshint": "^1.0.0",
    "grunt-contrib-watch": "^1.0.0",
    "grunt-istanbul-coverage": "^0.1.4",
    "grunt-karma": "^2.0.0",
    "karma": "^1.3.0",
    "karma-chrome-launcher": "^2.0.0",
    "karma-cli": "^1.0.1",
    "karma-firefox-launcher": "^1.0.0",
    "karma-jasmine": "^1.0.2",
    "karma-phantomjs-launcher": "^1.0.2",
    "jasmine-core": "^2.5.2",
    "matchdep": "^1.0.1"
},
"scripts": {
    "postinstall": "node ./node_modules/bower/bin/bower install",
    "test": "node ./node_modules/.bin/grunt default"
}

And here's a snippet of karma.conf.js:

module.exports = function (config) {
'use strict';

config.set({
    frameworks: ['jasmine'],
    plugins: [
        'karma-jasmine',
        'karma-chrome-launcher',
        'karma-firefox-launcher',
        'karma-phantomjs-launcher'
    ],
    files: [
        <...>
    ],
    exclude: [],
    preprocessors: {
    },
    reporters: ['progress']
    port: 9877,
    runnerPort: 9101,
    colors: true,
    logLevel: config.LOG_DEBUG,
    autoWatch: true,
    browsers: ['PhantomJS'],
    captureTimeout: 60000,
    singleRun: true
});

Answer 1

Issue solved! In our CI environment, we aren't getting the node modules by running npm install - we are zipping the node_modules directory locally and adding it to our source code.

Zipping it on a Mac and exploding it on Windows and attempting to use those modules, especially phantomjs-prebuilt, is the reason why it wasn't capturing.

I zipped it from Windows instead and it worked perfectly.