Unable to call FirefoxDriver constructor

Question

I am continuously getting unsupportedCommandException when I am running the following code:

System.setProperty("webdriver.firefox.bin","C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\Firefox.exe");
    FirefoxProfile firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();

    String domain = "extensions.firebug.";
    firefoxProfile.setPreference("app.update.enabled", false);
    firefoxProfile.addExtension(new File("D:\\\\firebug-1.11.2-fx.xpi"));
    firefoxProfile.setPreference(domain + "currentVersion", "1.11.2");
    firefoxProfile.setPreference("extensions.firebug.cookies.enableSites", true);
    firefoxProfile.setPreference("extensions.firebug.allPagesActivation", "on");

    firefoxProfile.setPreference(domain + "framePosition", "bottom");
    firefoxProfile.setPreference(domain + "defaultPanelName", "cookies");

    WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile);
    driver.get("http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en");
    WebElement query = driver.findElement(By.name("q"));

Firefox version: 20.0, firebug 1.11.2.

Error message I am getting is as under:

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.UnsupportedCommandException: Bad request

Command duration or timeout: 437 milliseconds
Build info: version: '2.32.0', revision: '6c40c18', time: '2013-04-09 17:23:22'
System info: os.name: 'Windows XP', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '5.1', java.version: '1.6.0_24'
Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Unknown Source)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.createThrowable(ErrorHandler.java:187)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.throwIfResponseFailed(ErrorHandler.java:145)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:554)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.startSession(RemoteWebDriver.java:216)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:111)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:190)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:183)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:179)
    at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.<init>(FirefoxDriver.java:96)
    at com.vinit.tiwari.TestCookieFirefox.main(TestCookieFirefox.java:48)

Answer 1

This may be to do with your hosts configuration.

If you have a line like this:

127.0.0.1 domain1 domain2 domain3 localhost

Change it to:

127.0.0.1 localhost domain1 domain2 domain3

Answer 2

Per the accepted answer from @APWorsley, this issue can be caused by multiple aliases for the loopback adapter in your /etc/hosts file.

If you don't have convenient access to remove or reorder the aliases (maybe no root access, or Puppet is rewriting the file regularly), since Selenium issue #3280 is now fixed, there is a config-property access to account for and allow connections-from the different alias names in your hosts file.

First collect all the possible aliases for loopback/localhost/127.0.0.1 in your hosts file, then set the Firefox Driver property. For example if you had localhost plus localhost.localdomain, you can configure the driver like this:

FirefoxProfile profile = new FirefoxProfile();
profile.setPreference(FirefoxProfile.ALLOWED_HOSTS_PREFERENCE, "localhost,localhost.localdomain");
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(profile);