959517 - Clarify connection error message

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Remote Protocol :: Marionette, defect)

Description

[Malini Das [:mdas] - Away, not checking bugmail]

The Marionette connection error messages is unclear.

If you didn't forward your port or if marionette is unreachable, you get:
"Exception: Could not connect to given marionette host:port: [Errno 61] Connection refused"

Which 1) doesn't print out which host/port was given, 2) not clear whether the host is unreachable or the host/port combination, 3) "refused" is not the right word and 4) doesn't give you an actionable item.

Comment 1

[Vikas Mishra [:mishravikas]]

Hi, I would like to work on this bug, can you assign this to me please?

Comment 2

[Malini Das [:mdas] - Away, not checking bugmail]

You'll need a local copy of mozilla-central to make changes and test them:

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/

the Marionette client lives in 
<mozilla-central>/source/testing/marionette/client/marionette/

And this exact line is from:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/testing/marionette/client/marionette/runner/base.py#657

To replicate the error locally, go into:

<mozilla-central>/source/testing/marionette/client/

and start a virtual environment:

virtualenv my_venv

(if you do not have virtualenv, install it using `pip install virtualenv`)

Then activate it and install marionette client:

. my_venv/bin/activate
python setup.py develop

To get the error message, do:

marionette --address=localhost:2828 marionette/tests/unit/test_log.py

This should cause that message to show up.

To fix this, we should 1) print out which host and port combination we're trying.

2) we should verify if the host is reachable, perhaps by pinging the host.

3) the language should be more like: "Connection attempt failed"

4) If the host is not reachable, we shoudl print something like "<host> could not be pinged, is <host> available?"  If the host is reachable, we should ask them to check if the port is actually open.

To test the case where a connection is actually made, you can start firefox with marionette enabled. To do this, find where your Firefox executable is on your computer and launch it via the shell with the command line argument --marionette. For example, unix systems like OSX you can do:

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox --marionette

This will launch Firefox with Marionette running on localhost:2828

Comment 3

[Malini Das [:mdas] - Away, not checking bugmail]

verifying the host through a ping might be flaky, so we'll leave that up to the user.

Comment 4

[Vikas Mishra [:mishravikas]]

Attachment: bug959517.patch

Comment 5

[Malini Das [:mdas] - Away, not checking bugmail]

Comment on attachment 8392296 [details] [diff] [review]
bug959517.patch

Review of attachment 8392296 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks!

Comment 6

[Malini Das [:mdas] - Away, not checking bugmail]

landed in m-i:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/bf236376056c

Comment 7

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/bf236376056c