how to kill firefox gracefully from command line

Question

I am writing a program that needs to open a list of URLs. I have firefox on Ubuntu12.04, and every time I kill firefox and reopen it, there will be a message asking if I want to restore the previous sessions or not, which is quite annoying.

I invoke firefox(in Java) using

Runtime r= Runtime.getRuntime();
r.exec("firefox -new-instance www.google.com");

and kill it using

r.exec("killall firefox");

Is there a way to kill and reopen firefox more gracefully? I want the program run automatically without any pop-up messages or human intervention. Thanks a lot!

Here's your answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5284139/how-do-i-find-the-process-id-pid-of-a-process-started-in-java Actually, this isn't the correct answer but it helps. — biziclop, Dec 19 '12 at 21:49
thanks @Vash, I did that, but it happens again. Sometimes it pops up a window says "Firefox closed Unexpectedly While starting" and let me choose if continue in "Safe Mode". — xiaolong, Dec 19 '12 at 21:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 19 '12 at 21:52

1

I think you cannot kill Firefox gracefully from Java, but you can change your firefox settings so that it wont ask you everytime it re-opens.

See the link Firefox Restore Options which will help you.

answered Dec 19 '12 at 21:52

Sajan Chandran

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mikeslattery · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-19T22:02:27.080

1

Use WebDriver to load and stop Firefox. You can get a separate Firefox instance with a separate profile. You won't be asked to restore sessions.

FirefoxProfile fp = new FirefoxProfile();
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(fp);
driver.get(url);

Then to close the browser and any child windows:

driver.quit();

edited Dec 19 '12 at 22:02

answered Dec 19 '12 at 21:57

mikeslattery

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Thanks mike! exactly what I want. – xiaolong Dec 19 '12 at 22:31

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 19 '12 at 21:52

0

Instead of launching firefox directly, launch a shell script that launches firefox in the background, then prints the PID of the firefox process on the standard out.

Then you can read the PID back through the Process object returned by Runtime.exec()

answered Dec 19 '12 at 21:52

biziclop

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how to kill firefox gracefully from command line

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