"Error: Electron failed to install correctly" when using CLI

I used this package about six months ago without issue, but later versions (will report back with a since) seem to have the following error:

Error: Electron failed to install correctly, please delete node_modules/electron and try installing again

Quick test case:

docker run --rm -it --name test kipparker/docker-tape-run sleep 1000000 (just to get a quick test container up that has all the deps)

Connect into the container and npm install -g electron-pdf. Run an electron-pdf command, such as electron-pdf http://example.com ~/test.pdf

Results in something like:

Error: Electron failed to install correctly, please delete node_modules/electron and try installing again
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-pdf/node_modules/electron/index.js:9:9)
    at Module._compile (module.js:409:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:416:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:343:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:300:12)
    at Module.require (module.js:353:17)
    at require (internal/module.js:12:17)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-pdf/cli.js:4:20)
    at Module._compile (module.js:409:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:416:10)

[colinwoods]

I had this problem as well on a fresh install on Ubuntu 18.04 with Node v8.10.0 and NPM 3.5.2.

I got it working by installing some additional packages and running electron/install.js after installing electron-pdf, see below:

$ sudo apt-get install xvfb xorg openbox libgtkextra-dev libgconf2-dev libnss3 libasound2 libxtst-dev libxss1 libxtst6 libgtk2.0-0
$ sudo npm install electron-pdf --global
$ cd /usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-pdf/node_modules/electron/ && node install.js
$ sudo apt-get install xvfb # or equivalent 
$ export DISPLAY=':99.0'
$ Xvfb :99 -screen 0 1024x768x24 > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Then you it works on command line e.g.

$ electron-pdf http://mysite/file.html /tmp/output.pdf

[codecounselor]

Thanks @colinwoods, I don’t know why I didn’t share this earlier, but this is how I have my image configured.

FROM ubuntu:18.04

WORKDIR /app

RUN apt-get update && \
  apt-get install -y \
# v8 comes from apt
  nodejs npm \
# Required for Headless Electron/Chromium Rendering
  libgconf2-4 libxss1 libxtst6 libnss3 libasound2 xvfb dbus-x11 libgtk2.0-common \
# Get rid of files we don't need
  rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* && \
# Get latest npm
  npm install -g npm

And while not required if only using electron-pdf I also use these packages (which may pull in other dependencies)

# Required for PDF -> PNG Conversion
  mupdf-tools \
# Used for PDF->PNG splitting by pdf2images-multiple
  poppler-utils && \