Puppeteer don´t run with cronjobs

I want to run node.js process as a cron job, but process are not running well.

My javascript code is just the first puppeteer example available in docs (https://pptr.dev/):

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer'),
      process   = require('process')
;

(async () => {

    console.log( 'process owner: ' + process.env.USER );
    
    console.log('browser launch');
    const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
    
    console.log('browser launched, open new page');
    const page = await browser.newPage();
    
    console.log('Go to example.com');
    await page.goto('https://example.com');
    await page.screenshot({path: process.env.USER + '_example.png'});

    await browser.close();
})();

I’ve added username to validate the user that’s running the script and cron job is this:

01 * * * * /usr/local/nvm/versions/node/v10.16.0/bin/node /var/node/pupp_test/init.js > /var/node/pupp_test/output.txt

So, if I run manually the script:

process owner: efeferrari
browser launch
browser launched, open new page
Go to example.com

But, when script runs with cronjob, output file is just:

process owner: efeferrari
browser launch

I don’t understand why Puppeteer has this problem if the process owner is the same with bash and cron

I have node.js installed with NVM and configured Puppeteer with setup setuid sandbox, so I can run node and puppeteer with all users in the machine.

Searching about my problem, I’ve find in StackOverflow a topic talking about executing Puppeteer from PHP and I’ve already try with setfacl in node_modules/puppeter/.local-chromium/ and in /usr/local/sbin/chrome-devel-sandbox, but does not resolve my issue

• OS is Centos 7
• Node version is 10.16.0
• Puppeteer version is 1.19.0

[alfonmga]

I have the same issue and finally I decided to use PM2

One command and you’re set:

pm2 start index.js --log app.log --time --cron "* * * * *" && pm2 save

And you would need to run this one too to execute PM2 on startup:

pm2 startup

I hope PM2 doesn’t overload my Raspberry Pi, that’s why I really wanted to use crontab initially 😃

[softwaredeveloptam]

Original Post Before using PM2, I’m still looking for a particular solution for this. If I find it, I’ll post it here.

Edit 1 Found an answer for myself that worked with crontab, will post it in a bit

Edit 2 After installing all the additional items to get Chromium and Puppeteer working together. I set up my cronjob as root user and I had to specific a couple of things within the crontab -e

SHELL and PATH need to be specify to get the proper environment variables as the crontab has it’s own environmental variables that differ from your host machine.

• echo $PATH
• Then whichever $PATH that was here, I inserted it below.
• PATH=/root/bin (yours should be different or more lengthy, you can choose which ones are necessary. Between each : is a path to where your environment variables are)
• SHELL=/bin/bash so it would have access to bash

Resources used:

• Setup Puppeteer on Centos 7
• Reasons why cron won’t execute my node script
• How to run a cronjob with existing environmental variables
• Execute a node script within a crontab