Removing logout button

When I set up a Selenium Server it only works when someone is logged in. In a previous article I wrote how to make a user automatically log in. For this article I'll write how to prevent that user from logging out.

1. Run regedit.exe
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
3. Create a new Key called Explorer
4. Go to Explorer folder
5. Create the DWORD key StartMenuLogoff.
6. Set it to 1.
7. Go to the Start Menu and use Shutdown or Reboot (so Logoff is not the last option used).

When you log in as that user now, they will not have a Logoff button available to them. This has been tested on Windows 7.

automatic log in, automatic run

When writing test scripts for testing an installer, on Windows, one of the challenges is when the installer requires a reboot. To handle this I use automatic log in and the run once features of Windows.

To create automatic log in:

1. Run regedit.exe
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
3. Set DefaultUserName to the name of the person you want to automatically log in. If the key does not exist add it as REG_SZ.
4. Set DefaultPassword to the user's password. If the key does not exist add it as REG_SZ. Note: anyone who can read the registry can see the user's name and password. Create a local user with no permission on your network.
5. Set AutoAdminLogon to 1. If the key does not exist add it as REG_SZ.
6. Set ForceAutoLogon to 1. If the key does not exist add it as REG_SZ.

And that is all you need to have the computer automatically log in after a reboot.

The second part is to create a script which will start up the automation at the right place. What usually happens is the installer will put something in place so that after the reboot it will continue with the install the moment the user logs in. If this is the case for your installer, write a script which continues the automation and add it to the RunOnce key. Assuming you have a batch file which starts part 2 of your automation:

1. Run regedit.exe
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
3. Add a string value
4. The Name of the should be something like zzz_Automation
5. The Data value will be the full path to the batch file. It is important to note that the current directory will not be the location of the batch file. Do not assume it will be in your script. Either use full paths for everything in the script or change to the directory you think you should be in then continue with the script.

Enjoy.

Random crashes

New application under test is a web based application. We have Windows and Mac OS X customers. All our Mac OS X customers are using Safari 5.0 or 5.1. Most our Windows customers are using Internet Explorer. We use the meta tag to force Internet Explorer 8 compatibility if you are using Internet Explorer 9. A handful of our Windows customers are using Firefox (whatever is latest).

So I need to create an automated test suite for:

• Safari 5.0 on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) 32-bit OS
• Safari 5.1 on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) 64-bit OS
• Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP 32-bit OS
• Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 64-bit OS
• Firefox 8 on Windows 7 64-bit OS

With this combination I feel I have adequately covered the combinations our customers will care about. If time allowed and everything was written with one automation technology, there is no reason I couldn't run it on other combinations. For example Internet Explorer 9 on Windows XP 32-bit OS or Firefox 7 on Windows XP 64-bit OS.

The assumption is that the above 5 combinations will find most the defects.

My problem is that Safari on Mac OS X is as equally important as Internet Explorer on Windows.

After poking around the web I found Selenium 2.0 (WebDriver) supports all the platforms, sort of. There is no Safari driver for WebDriver but I have a snippet here for using Selenium 1.0 to create a Safari instance, from that I can create a SeleneseCommandExecutor and with the Executor I can create a RemoteWebDriver. A bit hacky but it works.

So I started creating my test automation. I got up to 39 test cases when I decided to run them as a single suite. Ran them on Firefox 8 and everything worked perfectly. Ran them on Internet Explorer. Around 25 test cases in and Internet Explorer pops up a dialog telling me something went wrong with Internet Explorer. I can debug it (because I have Visual Studio installed) or just close it. Regardless, my automation is dead. If my automation dies after the 25th test case and I build it up to 45,000 that would be totally useless. I wouldn't be completely happy with it but if it at least recovered and continued on to the next test case it would be better. But it does not.

So the hunt goes on. I have found a commercial product which claims to work for all the above platforms and more. I'll split up time between evaluating the commercial product and debugging Selenium. Hopefully by  the end of the week I'll have a decision one way or the other.

Stay tuned...

Using Oracle SQL Developer with SQL Server

If you are looking for a SQL Client for both Oracle DB and Microsoft SQL Server you can use the Oracle SQL Developer with the jTDS plugin.

Get Oracle SQL Developer from the Oracle web site. Just use your favourite search engine to search for 'Oracle SQL Developer'. These instructions have been verified to work with SQL Developer 3.0.

Once you have installed Oracle SQL Developer, run it and go to the Help menu. There you should find the Check For Updates... option. There will be a dialog with Third Party SQL Developer Extensions as an option. Make sure this is selected.

On the next page there will be an option to select the jTDS extension. Select this for SQL Server and Sybase support.

Once you accept the license agreement and restart SQL Developer, you will now have a tab for SQL Server when creating a new connection.

Windows Manage

Originally, there was Windows 3.1, Windows 9x and Windows NT. The 3.1 version was pretty much dead when Windows 95 came out. Windows 95/98/ME were okay but did not have the robustness of Windows NT.

If you wanted to use a home computer you'd go for Windows 9x but for a work environment they liked Windows NT. Windows NT 4.0 came before Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is REALLY Windows NT 5.0. If you look in the registry (regedit.exe) you will see evidence of NT 5.0. Windows XP Professional is Windows NT 6.0. Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP Professional are on par. One is server class and the other is workstation class.

Since Windows 2000, all of these (including Windows Vista) have an extra menu option when you right click on "My Computer". It is the Manage option. When you select Manage it opens up the Microsoft Management Console (mmc). You can even find this on Windows XP Home.

MMC is a framework that you can open other programs inside. If you go to the Control Panel, you will find things like Services, Disk Management, Event Viewer, etc. When you open up Manage, it opens the MMC with *ALL* these administrative tools in it. You can edit users/groups, manage disk drives, view events, create performance logs, etc.

Any place you can see "My Computer" you can right click on it and select Manage. This is a great shortcut to these administrative tools. You should give this area a peek and see what is available in there. Be careful though; this is an area where you can lock yourself out of the system or disable the bootable hard drive if you are not careful.