Rails: Error running wkhtmltopdf — (error while loading shared libraries)

Question

When my app runs (or when I run from commandline) the wkhtmltopdf command I get the following error: (showing it from command line)

#> wkhtmltopdf 
wkhtmltopd         


        

Answer 1

I had this same issue on running a Rails 5.2 application on an Ubuntu 18.04 production server, the issue was that there were missing dependencies for libXrender on the server

Here's how I solved it:

Run the command below to search for the missing dependencies:

sudo apt-cache search libXrender

This will display the output below:

libxrender-dev - X Rendering Extension client library (development files)
libxrender1 - X Rendering Extension client library
libreoffice - office productivity suite (metapackage)

If you're running on a production server, simply install libxrender1 only (for rendering PDFs):

sudo apt-get install libxrender1

Also, if possible run upgrades for outdated libraries on your server:

sudo apt upgrade

Once, all these have been completed, simply restart your application server (If your application server is puma and if your setup systemd for the server):

sudo systemctl restart puma

That's all.

I hope this helps