Can't Get IE 10 Agent To Work (Register)

WebPageTest Private Instances
1

I am setting up WPT server and test agents on AWS EC2.

For the server, I have been following the tutorial/walkthrough here: How to set up a private WebPageTest Instance on EC2 to measure front end performance - Vox Product Blog

I then tried to use the following AMIs for the agents (from https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/private-instances, I am running both server and agents on US West - California):
IE10/Chrome/Firefox/Safari (2014, wptdriver only) - ami-9aa4c9aa
IE11/Chrome/Firefox/Safari (2014, wptdriver only) - ami-82a4c9b2

I couldn’t get the IE11 AMI to work at all - after it spins up, no agents ever connect to the server, and when I RDC into it, it always display the following error: “error loading settings from wptdriver.ini”. It only works if I stop the WPTDriver window and restart it. But that would only register the FF and Chrome agents, never IE11.

I have better success with the IE10 AMI. FF and Chrome actually registers itself correctly, and I haven’t seen the “error loading settings from wptdriver.ini” error yet. However, the IE10 agent doesn’t register itself at all, so I cannot run any tests using IE.

My locations.ini file is as follows:
[locations]
1=US_W
label=“US West (California)”

[US_W]
1=US_West
2=US_West_wptdriver
default=US_West
label=“US West (California)”

[US_West]
browser=IE 10
label=“US West (California) - IE 10”

[US_West_wptdriver]
browser=Chrome,Firefox
label=“US West (California)”

The user data I pass into the IE10 AMI is:
wpt_server=my.domain.com wpt_location=US_West

I have also attached screen grabs from my: /install and /getLocations.php

I think I must have mis-configured something - either my locations.ini or my user data, but I cannot figure it out.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
-B

2

I have a fix (I think) for the “error loading settings” issue coming in 2.15 but it is also going to require me to re-build the AMIs so there will be new AMI ID’s. The problem is that it only tries to load the settings once and if it starts before the networking is up it will fail to fetch the user data which is why restarting works (or so the theory goes). The new agents keeps trying to load the settings until it succeeds.

The problem with the locations is that the newer AMI’s (IE 10 and 11) combine the Chrome/Firefox and IE locations together. Using wpt_loc instead of wpt_location eliminates the extra _wptdriver entry.

An ini file like this for example:

[locations]
1=US_W
label="US West (California)"

[US_W]
1=US_West
default=US_West
label="US West (California)"

[US_West]
browser=IE 10,Chrome,Firefox
label="US West (California)"

along with this user data:

wpt_server=my.domain.com wpt_loc=US_West

You could also just add IE 10 to the browser list for the _wptdriver location and get rid of the non-_wptdriver location and it should work.

Sorry about the confusion, looks like I need to update the docs to make that part clear.

3

Thanks Patrick! It’s working for me now.

-B