I have a vmware esxi virtual machine running RHEL6.3 which acts as a hudson ci server. I am trying to setup the box so that it can run my selenium testcases initiated from hudson. The application to test requires browser authentication and using the format does not work, so as a workaround, for each test case I spawn a thread right after opening the URL in firefox, which uses robot from awt to perform the simple sequence- "type username -> press tab -> type password -> press enter". This is a quick and dirty hack but it works. My problem is that this sequence does not work unless I open the virtual monitor in vsphere client. My guess is that unless the virtual monitor is open, the screen is going blank and that is throwing the robot sequence off-track. Now before initiating each test from hudson, i have to open the virtual monitor in my workstation and keep it open. I have tried disabling sleep from power management and setting kernel parameters "apm=off acpi=off" but to no avail. I have a hunch it would have worked if the box was a physical machine with a physical monitor, but currently I don't have any spare boxes to test the theory. Can anyone help me with this peculiar problem of mine ?

This is what I use to prevent my VMs from blanking the screen. As root:

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled false --type bool

I'm not sure if this will have the desired effect for your particular application.