Is md-to-pdf supported on Detached Ubuntu Server?

[Karlstens]

Hello!

First I'd like to say thank you everyone for this project, it's really interesting! I've managed to get it up a running in moments within my dev environment (Windows Desktop, VS Code, Node.js) and so I figured that I might try get it running in a server to see how far I can push a couple of ideas.

I've setup my npm project within the latest Ubuntu Server (guest VM), that I run in detached mode - however upon executing my script it errors out. It's worth noting it's purely a md-to-pdf dependency project, with nothing more.

 Error: Failed to launch the browser process!
[8692:8692:0203/194125.312154:FATAL:zygote_host_impl_linux.cc(128)] No usable sandbox! If you are running on Ubuntu 23.10+ or another Linux distro that has disabled unprivileged user namespaces with AppArmor, see https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/security/apparmor-userns-restrictions.md. Otherwise see https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/linux/suid_sandbox_development.md for more information on developing with the (older) SUID sandbox. If you want to live dangerously and need an immediate workaround, you can try using --no-sandbox.
[0203/194125.315722:ERROR:file_io_posix.cc(145)] open /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq: No such file or directory (2)
[0203/194125.315744:ERROR:file_io_posix.cc(145)] open /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq: No such file or directory (2)


TROUBLESHOOTING: https://pptr.dev/troubleshooting

    at ChildProcess.onClose (/var/www/convertAirtable/node_modules/@puppeteer/browsers/lib/cjs/launch.js:314:24)

I suspect that my issue revolves around puppeteer failing to run on the latest Ubuntu Server (v24.04) due to its improved/changed security - but as this is my first time also with puppeteer I figured I'd ask here for some initial guidance.

Appreciate any suggestions that would allow me to progress. I'm downloading/testing on the latest Ubuntu Desktop on the side to see if it that encounters the same issue.

EDIT: After testing on a new Ubuntu Desktop build, my sample project worked as it did in my Windows Desktop VS Code environment. The same problem however occurs when I close down VS Code (on the Ubuntu Desktop), and then start the terminal, then execute npm run myPDFproject from the terminal - No usable sandbox error.

Edit2: Looked further into Puppeteer config, this seems to have hit the spot - however I have some learning/reading to do. :)

puppeteerConfig.mjs

export function getPuppeteerLaunchOptions() {
    return {
      headless: true,
      args: [
        "--no-sandbox",
        "--disable-setuid-sandbox",
        "--disable-dev-shm-usage",
        "--disable-gpu",
        "--no-zygote",
        "--single-process",
      ],
    };
  }

[simonhaenisch]

I think most of your issues would be documented in the puppeteer troubleshooting guide, for example:

https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/blob/main/docs/troubleshooting.md#issues-with-apparmor-on-ubuntu

As you already seem to have figured out, your problem is just to get Puppeteer able to launch Chromium/Chrome on your system, which also requires a bunch of dependencies to be installed (listed further up in the troubleshooting guide).

I've seen successful usage of md-to-pdf on linux servers, e.g. dillinger.io (https://github.com/joemccann/dillinger), so it's definitely possible.