How to get chromote working?

[courtiol]

Container image name

rocker/geospatial

Container image digest

No response

What operating system related to this question?

Linux

System information

podman version 5.2.5, Fedora release 41 (Forty One), kernel 6.11.7-300.fc41.x86_64

Question

I am trying to have the R package chromote working within a container that also include the spatial packages (I did not try to do that in a more simple container but I guess the issue would be the same).

[XX@XX]$ podman pull rocker/geospatial
[XX@XX]$ podman run -ti rocker/geospatial bash                                                                                                                                                                                                
root@5a68e75a1731:/# apt -y update 
root@5a68e75a1731:/# apt install -y chromium-browser                                                                                                                        
root@5a68e75a1731:/# R
> install.packages("chromote")                                                                                                 
Installing package into ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
also installing the dependencies ‘AsioHeaders’, ‘websocket’

trying URL 'https://p3m.dev/cran/__linux__/noble/latest/src/contrib/AsioHeaders_1.22.1-2.tar.gz'
Content type 'binary/octet-stream' length 649323 bytes (634 KB) 
==================================================
downloaded 634 KB

trying URL 'https://p3m.dev/cran/__linux__/noble/latest/src/contrib/websocket_1.4.2.tar.gz'
Content type 'binary/octet-stream' length 468359 bytes (457 KB) 
==================================================
downloaded 457 KB

trying URL 'https://p3m.dev/cran/__linux__/noble/latest/src/contrib/chromote_0.3.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'binary/octet-stream' length 391789 bytes (382 KB) 
==================================================
downloaded 382 KB

* installing *binary* package ‘AsioHeaders’ ...
* DONE (AsioHeaders)
* installing *binary* package ‘websocket’ ...
* DONE (websocket)
* installing *binary* package ‘chromote’ ...
* DONE (chromote)

The downloaded source packages are in
        ‘/tmp/RtmpCwBzky/downloaded_packages’

As you can see, the R package chromote does seem to install fine within rocker/geospatial, but the package does not work once loaded:

> chromote::ChromoteSession$new()
Error in `with_random_port()`:
! Cannot find an available port. Please try again.
Caused by error in `startup()`:
! Failed to start chrome. Error:

Command '/usr/bin/chromium-browser' requires the chromium snap to be installed.
Please install it with:

snap install chromium
Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see where the error occurred.

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.4.2 (2024-10-31)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libblas.so.3  
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libopenblasp-r0.3.26.so;  LAPACK version 3.12.0

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

time zone: Etc/UTC
tzcode source: system (glibc)

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] websocket_1.4.2 processx_3.8.4  compiler_4.4.2  fastmap_1.2.0  
 [5] magrittr_2.0.3  R6_2.5.1        cli_3.6.3       promises_1.3.2 
 [9] later_1.4.1     tools_4.4.2     Rcpp_1.0.13-1   chromote_0.3.1 
[13] jsonlite_1.8.9  ps_1.8.1        rlang_1.1.4

I did try to use snap but it would not install:

**root@5a68e75a1731:/# snap install chromium
error: cannot communicate with server: Post "http://localhost/v2/snaps/chromium": dial unix /run/snapd.socket: connect: no such file or directory
**

I also tried installing chrome:

[XX@XX]$ podman run -ti rocker/geospatial bash                                                                                                                                                                                                
root@4d28f26b22b2:/# apt -y update 
root@4d28f26b22b2:/# cd home
root@4d28f26b22b2:/home# wget -q https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
root@4d28f26b22b2:/home# apt install -y ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb     

This time I get the following error message in R:

> install.packages("chromote")
Installing package into ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
also installing the dependencies ‘AsioHeaders’, ‘websocket’

trying URL 'https://p3m.dev/cran/__linux__/noble/latest/src/contrib/AsioHeaders_1.22.1-2.tar.gz'
Content type 'binary/octet-stream' length 649323 bytes (634 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 634 KB

trying URL 'https://p3m.dev/cran/__linux__/noble/latest/src/contrib/websocket_1.4.2.tar.gz'
Content type 'binary/octet-stream' length 468359 bytes (457 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 457 KB

trying URL 'https://p3m.dev/cran/__linux__/noble/latest/src/contrib/chromote_0.3.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'binary/octet-stream' length 391789 bytes (382 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 382 KB

* installing *binary* package ‘AsioHeaders’ ...
* DONE (AsioHeaders)
* installing *binary* package ‘websocket’ ...
* DONE (websocket)
* installing *binary* package ‘chromote’ ...
* DONE (chromote)

The downloaded source packages are in
        ‘/tmp/Rtmp3MUOSz/downloaded_packages’
> chromote::ChromoteSession$new()
Error in `with_random_port()`:
! Cannot find an available port. Please try again.
Caused by error in `startup()`:
! Failed to start chrome. Error:
Old Headless mode will be removed from the Chrome binary soon. Please use the new Headless mode (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/chromium/new-headless) or the chrome-headless-shell which is a standalone implementation of the old Headless mode (https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-headless-shell).

[1223/104524.696601:ERROR:zygote_host_impl_linux.cc(101)] Running as root without --no-sandbox is not supported. See https://crbug.com/638180.
Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see where the error occurred.

I tried to install headless chrome but did not go very far on that path either...
Please let me know if that should be an issue for chromote instead.