Selenium Firefox webdriver for python KeyError 'value' - python-2.7

Question

I started with the following basic python script for using selenium:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select, WebDriverWait
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_binary import FirefoxBinary
path_bin='/usr/bin/firefox'
path_dr='/usr/local/bin/geckodriver'
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
binary=FirefoxBinary(path_bin)
self.driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=path_dr,firefox_profile=profile,firefox_binary=binary)
self.driver.implicitly_wait(30)
Then, I tried executing it twice (first time without sudo and second time with sudo) as follows:
user4#pc-4:~/Scripts$ python test.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 2049, in <module>
self.driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=path_dr,firefox_profile=profile,firefox_binary=binary)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/webdriver.py", line 144, in __init__
self.service = Service(executable_path, log_path=log_path)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/service.py", line 44, in __init__
log_file = open(log_path, "a+") if log_path is not None and log_path != "" else None
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'geckodriver.log'
user4#pc-4:~/Scripts$ sudo python test.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 2049, in <module>
self.driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=path_dr,firefox_profile=profile,firefox_binary=binary)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/webdriver.py", line 155, in __init__
keep_alive=True)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 92, in __init__
self.start_session(desired_capabilities, browser_profile)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 183, in start_session
self.capabilities = response['value']
KeyError: 'value'
So, I have to understand the following:
As observed IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'geckodriver.log' is being observed when I run the program without a sudo. Is that really required?
Even though the browser window is opened, in spite of having resolved all the dependencies (I'm using Ubuntu 16.04) like geckodriver for Firefox, I'm getting the above error KeyError: 'value'. How can I resolve this? Do I have to make any changes in my code to avoid this?
I could use some helpful advice/tips/tweaks to get my program running.
P.S.: Digging into the web to learn on selenium, points to some architecture-specific issues as mentioned in here and here and none of them seems to have been solved and that concerns me. Would chrome be a better option?
Update: The following is the output of ls -alh:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 238K Aug 22 17:12 geckodriver.log
-rwxrwxrwx 1 user4 user 82K Aug 22 17:08 test.py

Answer 1

As you were trying to pass a couple of arguments when invoking webdriver.Firefox(), we need to consider that executable_path and firefox_binary both these arguments takes string type of arguments. So you need to pass the absolute path of geckodriver binary to executable_path and the absolute path of firefox binary to firefox_binary. Further you don't need to use binary=FirefoxBinary(path_bin). The following code block works fine on my Windows 8 machine:
Code is based on Python 3.6.1
from selenium import webdriver
path_bin=r'C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe'
path_dr=r'C:\Utility\BrowserDrivers\geckodriver.exe'
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=path_dr,firefox_profile=profile,firefox_binary=path_bin)
driver.get('https://www.google.co.in')
As you are on ubuntu the following code block must work for you:
from selenium import webdriver
path_bin='/usr/bin/firefox'
path_dr='/usr/local/bin/geckodriver'
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=path_dr,firefox_profile=profile,firefox_binary=path_bin)
driver.get('https://www.google.co.in')

Answer 2

I had this same issue with
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 183, in start_session
self.capabilities = response['value']
KeyError: 'value'
So I have updated selenium and geckodriver to the latest version. This was the solution in my case.