Hi,
Why do we need a test machine? and How can we setup this on ubuntu 12.04?
I just setup a web server for webpagetest and followed the steps.
It is not giving any options in the dropdown for Test Location and Browser. Please suggest what could be done.
You need a test machine to run the actual browser. WebPagetest runs a real browser on a real desktop/device and measures what it does. The desktop code is Windows (where the vast majority of the desktop browser use is) and the mobile agents run on Android.
You can do testing on mobile Android devices connected to a ubuntu machine.
The node.js agent has basic support for running desktop Chrome tests and works on Linux but it’s still really alpha code and not documented at all.
Locations will not show up unless you actually run test agents for those locations because there’s nothing running to do the work.
If you don’t want to run your own machines and need to test sites that are reachable on the Internet you can use the EC2 AMI’s for test agents: https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/private-instances#TOC-EC2-Test-Agents