Output error message when no display is available

[scottwilson312]

#!/usr/bin/env node


const path = require('path')
const { spawn } = require('child_process')
const electronPath = require('electron')

const args = process.argv.slice(2)
const pathToMain = path.join(__dirname, 'orca_electron.js')
args.unshift(path.resolve(pathToMain))

spawn(electronPath, args, { stdio: 'inherit' })
root@mw-8479d67f8b-nxzdl:/usr/bin# orca
root@mw-8479d67f8b-nxzdl:/usr/bin# orca kcdjkajfd
root@mw-8479d67f8b-nxzdl:/usr/bin# node orca

I'm not familiar enough with node to know what's up. This is inside an Ubuntu docker. The script isn't erroring out, but it isn't producing any output.

[antoinerg]

Within a Docker container, one needs to run xvfb

Xvfb (short for X virtual framebuffer) is an in-memory display server for UNIX-like operating system (e.g., Linux). It enables you to run graphical applications without a display (e.g., browser tests on a CI server) while also having the ability to take screenshots.

I am working on releasing an official Docker image for Orca. Stay tune, it is coming very soon!

[antoinerg]

@scottwilson312 I went ahead and changed the title of the issue. I agree that the current behavior is not user-friendly at all... In the absence of a display, an error should be displayed to the user.

Thanks for reporting this!

[scottwilson312]

Thanks for the response, much appreciated. I ended up getting it working with xvfb, however I needed to run the docker container as privileged.

I ended up adapting the dockerfile here https://hub.docker.com/r/cpsievert/plotly-orca/dockerfile

[antoinerg]

Similarly, we should output a friendlier error message when plotly.js cannot be found by the renderer as discussed in https://github.com/plotly/orca/issues/232