Could not contact Selenium Server; have you started it on 'localhost:4444'? - selenium

Question

I am using selenium standalone version 2.33.0 to run the automated test cases. It was running fine until last month. The firefox version then was 21.x. Now it is upgraded to ver-22.
I figured out that selenium 2.33 does not work with the latest firefox browser. So I changed the value of 'maxVersion' to 23.0.* in the below files:
./customProfileDirCUSTFF/extensions/readystate#openqa.org/install.rdf
./customProfileDirCUSTFF/extensions/{538F0036-F358-4f84-A764-89FB437166B4}/install.rdf
./customProfileDirCUSTFFCHROME/extensions/readystate#openqa.org/install.rdf
./customProfileDirCUSTFFCHROME/extensions/{503A0CD4-EDC8-489b-853B-19E0BAA8F0A4}/install.rdf
./customProfileDirCUSTFFCHROME/extensions/{538F0036-F358-4f84-A764-89FB437166B4}/install.rdf
After this when I try to run selenium, I get the below error:
Could not contact Selenium Server; have you started it on 'localhost:4444' ? Read more at http://seleniumhq.org/projects/remote-control/not-started.html Connection refused
com.thoughtworks.selenium.DefaultSelenium.start(DefaultSelenium.java:86)
at qa.apigee.common.ApigeeOnlineUITestBase.launchBrowser(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.testng.internal.MethodHelper.invokeMethod(MethodHelper.java:640)
at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurationMethod(Invoker.java:503)
at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurations(Invoker.java:193)
at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurations(Invoker.java:123)
at org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.invokeBeforeClassMethods(TestMethodWorker.java:183)
at org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.run(TestMethodWorker.java:115)
at org.testng.TestRunner.runWorkers(TestRunner.java:1098)
at org.testng.TestRunner.privateRun(TestRunner.java:727)
at org.testng.TestRunner.run(TestRunner.java:581)
at org.testng.SuiteRunner.runTest(SuiteRunner.java:315)
at org.testng.SuiteRunner.runSequentially(SuiteRunner.java:310)
at org.testng.SuiteRunner.privateRun(SuiteRunner.java:272)
at org.testng.SuiteRunner.run(SuiteRunner.java:221)
at org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.runSuite(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:40)
at org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.run(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:83)
at org.testng.internal.thread.ThreadUtil$CountDownLatchedRunnable.run(ThreadUtil.java:151)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:895)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:918)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680)
Please help!

Answer 1

Try to add the below code to start the server.
public void setUp() throws Exception {
selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*chrome", "http://www.google.com/");
selenium.start();
}
Hope this will solve your problem.

Answer 2

You can try this one. You can change the port number as follows:
Goto run-> ExternalTools ->ExternalToolsConfiguration->update the "arguments" as below:
-jar selenium-server-standalone-2.42.2 jar -port 1234 ->apply-> run
After making this, change the port num as 1234 in your program, save the program and run.

Answer 3

It's necessary to start the server:
You should go to the directory where Selenium RC’s server is located and run the following from a command-line console:
java -jar selenium-server-standalone-<version-number>.jar
You can also create a .bat on Windows o .sh on Linux
Source: Running selenium server (http://www.seleniumhq.org/docs/05_selenium_rc.jsp)