So here is the final deal (on ubuntu Dapper) -
1. Get the ruby-gnome2-all package from here
2. Get the firefox-dev package using apt-get. (Note this is required for building the gtkmozembed.)
3. Get the moz-snapshooter.rb
4. Edit it to your needs
5. Fire ruby moz-snapshooter.rb
Most of the things just work out of the box.
Now comes a little tricky part. All of this requires an X server running. So what if one wants to run it on a headless X server? The answer is Xvfb (which is a virtual frame buffer based X server.) Continuing further.
6. Install Xvfb using apt-get.
7. Finally run the 'ruby moz-snapshooter.rb' inside 'xvfb-run' as follows
xvfb-run -s "-screen 800x600x16" ruby moz-snapshooter.rb
Note to pass -s "-screen 800x600x16" option, since most of the websites work well in that resolution.
Caveats:
1. The libgtk-mozembed-ruby package that comes for 'ubuntu' uses the gtkembed.so library provided by mozilla 1.7.X (which is not compiled with pango renderer. It is better to use firefox-dev library and hence build by hand the ruby-gnome2-all package.)
2. The final output resolution image should be of smaller resolution than the one passed to xvfb-run.
3. This is not 'perfect' yet, but a good starting point.
Here are some samples.
1. Google in 150x100 resolution -
2. paahijen.com in 320x200 resolution -
3. Marathi wikipedia in 640x480 resolution -
References :
1. A pygtk implementation by Andrew McCall
2. moz-snapshooter.rb by Mirko Maischberger
3. Ideum screenshot capture prototype
8 comments:
one more caveat. Requires LD_LIBRARY_PATH set to /usr/lib/firefox
Have you had any luck getting this to run in a web server? I've played about with moz_snapshooter and got it working from a command line just fine, but when I try to run it from within a mongrel or webrick server I get a segfault and the whole server dies. Not good :-(
I think that is what I am going to be trying next, Guess is the LD_LIBRARY_PATH issue actually is causing the trouble for you in webrick or mongrel? Will definitely update this once I have some luck with this.
Just a suggestion, you'd have already tried it, in case you have not.
Try to put the firefox-dev library path in the /etc/ld.so.conf eg. add the following line to /etc/ld.so.conf
"/usr/lib/firefox" and then do "sudo ldconfig" to make sure the required libraries are accessible and then try it inside mongrel or webrick if there's any luck?
'Cos when I gdb'ed the SegFault, i figured it was not able to find out some firefox library (most probably the libgtkembed.so or something like that.. ) Here's the ldd output with firefox dependencies shown.
$ldd gtkmozembed.so | grep -i fire
libgtkembedmoz.so => /usr/lib/firefox/libgtkembedmoz.so (0xb7e19000)
libxpcom.so => /usr/lib/firefox/libxpcom.so (0xb77e5000)
libxpcom_core.so => /usr/lib/firefox/libxpcom_core.so (0xb75a2000)
In case this helps.
Hi guys! I love your article. I have modified the script a little so it can use arguments. Now I'm thinking if it could use an already running xvfb instead of xvfb-run of performance reasons.
Any ideas ?
Hi,
perfect article. However I cannot get is working :(
What am I missing?
When I'm trying to run it, I'm getting the following error:
root@jam:~# ruby moz-snapshooter.rb
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtk2.rb:13:in `init': Cannot open display: (RuntimeError)
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtk2.rb:13
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtkmozembed.rb:1:in `require'
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtkmozembed.rb:1
from moz-snapshooter.rb:12:in `require'
from moz-snapshooter.rb:12
root@jam:~# xvfb-run -s "-screen 800x600x16" ruby moz-snapshooter.rb
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtk2.rb:13:in `init': Cannot open display: :99 (RuntimeError)
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtk2.rb:13
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtkmozembed.rb:1:in `require'
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gtkmozembed.rb:1
from moz-snapshooter.rb:12:in `require'
from moz-snapshooter.rb:12
kill: 158: No such process
Any idea? System is Ubuntu Feisty x64 Server.
check if you have xfonts-base package installed
and try this command.
xvfb-run -s "-screen 0 800x600x16" ruby moz-snapshooter.rb
works like a charm! i modified the ruby code to pass arguments. thanks for the post!
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