How can I setup & run PhantomJS on Ubuntu?

I set up PhantomJS and recorded it to video: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnizmh_1_webcam

Build instructions: http://phantomjs.org/build.html

Is there anything wrong in my setup?

After I set it up I read the quick start tutorial and tried to write this code

phantomjs hello.js 

It gives me "command not found" error. How can I solve this problem?

Guidouil's answer put me on the right track. I had to add one additional symlink to /usr/bin/, and I did direct symlinks for all 3 - see below.

I'm installing on Ubuntu server Natty Narwhal.

This is exactly what I did.

cd /usr/local/share
sudo wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo tar xjf phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/share/phantomjs
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/phantomjs
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/bin/phantomjs

And finally when I do

phantomjs -v

I get 1.9.7

If anyone sees any problems with what I've done, please let me know.

PhantomJS is on npm. You can run this command to install it globally:

npm install -g phantomjs-prebuilt  

phantomjs -v should return 2.1.1

download from phantomjs website the prebuilt package : http://phantomjs.org/download.html then open a terminal and go to the Downloads folder

sudo mv phantomjs-1.8.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 /usr/local/share/.
cd /usr/local/share/
sudo tar xjf phantomjs-1.8.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.8.1-linux-x86_64 /usr/local/share/phantomjs
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/phantomjs

then to check install phantomjs -v should return 1.8.1

Install from package manager:

sudo apt-get install phantomjs

Here are the build steps I used (note these instructions are for version 1.3. See comments to this answer for the installation instructions of the latest PhantomJS):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git-core
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libqtwebkit-dev qt4-qmake
git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git && cd phantomjs
git checkout 1.3
qmake-qt4 && make

http://cisight.com/run-latest-phantomjs-with-shell_exec-php-on-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric/">Now install Xvfb

sudo apt-get install xvfb xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable xfonts-cyrillic

Launch Xvfb:
Xvfb :23 -screen 0 1024x768x24 &

Now run phantom:
DISPLAY=:23 ./phantomjs hello.js

For PhantomJS version above 1.5, consider this (verbatim copy of the build instructions on the phantom website):

> For Ubuntu Linux (tested on a barebone install of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid > Lynx and Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal): > > sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath git-core libssl-dev libfontconfig1-dev > git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git > cd phantomjs > git checkout 1.7 > ./build.sh

For Ubuntu you can use the prebuilt versions downloadable from the PhantomJS site.

If you have some serious time on your hands you can also build it yourself. (This is exactly the procedure from Nikhil's answer).

The guys over at PhantomJS recommend using the binaries to save time:

> Warning: Compiling PhantomJS from source takes a long time, mainly due to thousands of files in the WebKit module. With 4 parallel compile jobs on a modern machine, the entire process takes roughly 30 minutes. It is highly recommended to download and install the ready-made binary package if it is available.

With a modern machine they mean > 4 cores, > 8gb mem I think. I tried it on a micro AWS instance and gave up after 2 hours.

In short: install the prebuilt packages from the PhantomJS site per their instructions.

in my vagrant bootstrap:

apt-get install -y build-essential chrpath git-core libssl-dev libfontconfig1-dev
git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git
cd phantomjs
git checkout 1.9
echo y | ./build.sh
ln -s /home/vagrant/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/phantomjs
cd ..

Personaly I prefer using npm (see Arnel Bucio answer)

sudo npm install -g phantomjs

but! I noticed that some of npm module still can't see it as global executable.

so!

• Create new /usr/share/phantomjs/ directory link

    cd /usr/share
    sudo ln -s ../lib/node_modules/phantomjs/lib/phantom phantomjs
  

• Remove old /usr/bin/phantomjs executable link and create the new one

    cd /usr/bin
    sudo mv phantomjs phantomjs.old
    sudo ln -s ../share/phantomjs .
  

I have done with this.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath git-core libssl-dev libfontconfig1-dev
git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git
cd phantomjs
git checkout 1.9
./build.sh

See link Installation guide is in ...

> https://gist.github.com/julionc/7476620

And run in terminal with this command

> phantomjs --webdriver=4444

From the official site: phantomjs site

sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath git-core libssl-dev libfontconfig1-dev
git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git
cd phantomjs
git checkout 1.8
./build.sh

For Ubuntu, download the suitable file from http://phantomjs.org/download.html. CD to the downloaded folder. Then:

sudo tar xvf phantomjs-1.9.0-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo mv phantomjs-1.9.0-linux-x86_64 /usr/local/share/phantomjs
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs /usr/bin/phantomjs

Make sure to replace the file name in these commands with the file you have downloaded.

Be aware this is definitely one way to do it:

$ sudo apt-get install phantomjs
$ phantomjs -v
1.6.0

Sadly, it installs 1.6 and not the latest one, but this works for my purposes.

I know this is too old, but, just i case someone gets to this question from Google now, you can install it by typing apt-get install phantomjs

On Ubuntu for Windows, I found neither apt-get nor npm versions worked for me. What worked was the script from this comment.

For ease of use, I pasted the whole thing into a script file called install_phantomjs.sh, made it executable (chmod u+x install_phantomjs.sh), and then ran it (./install_phantomjs.sh)

Or the latest - 32bit version Linux

sudo wget http://phantomjs.googlecode.com/files/phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686.tar.bz2

sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/share/phantomjs

sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/phantomjs

sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin/phantomjs /usr/bin/phantomjs

Installation and Calling Phantomjs

Follow the steps doesn't work, but cloned from others built. (ver2.0)

Bellow the installation procedure by Julio Napurí https://gist.github.com/julionc

Version: 1.9.8

Platform: x86_64

First, install or update to the latest system software.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath libssl-dev libxft-dev

Install these packages needed by PhantomJS to work correctly.

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev
sudo apt-get install libfontconfig1 libfontconfig1-dev

Get it from the PhantomJS website.

cd ~
export PHANTOM_JS="phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64"
wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/$PHANTOM_JS.tar.bz2
sudo tar xvjf $PHANTOM_JS.tar.bz2

Once downloaded, move Phantomjs folder to /usr/local/share/ and create a symlink:

sudo mv $PHANTOM_JS /usr/local/share
sudo ln -sf /usr/local/share/$PHANTOM_JS/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin

Now, It should have PhantomJS properly on your system.

phantomjs --version

I have found this simpler way - Phantom dependencies + Npm

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath libssl-dev libxft-dev
sudo apt-get install libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev
sudo apt-get install libfontconfig1 libfontconfig1-dev

and npm

[sudo] npm install -g phantomjs

Done.

On linux to run hello.js don't forget to add the path of hello.js:

phantomjs YourPathToPhantomjsFolder/examples/hello.js

If you want to use phantomjs easily, you can use it at phantomjscloud.com You can get the result just by http request.

This is how I place a specific version of phantomjs in /usr/local/bin on my docker containers.

curl -Ls https://github.com/Medium/phantomjs/releases/download/v1.9.19/phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 \
    | tar jxvf - --strip-components=2 -C /usr/local/bin/ ./phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs

or with out ./ depending on OS.

curl -Ls https://github.com/Medium/phantomjs/releases/download/v1.9.19/phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 \
    | tar jxvf - --strip-components=2 -C /usr/local/bin/ phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs

You can get up and running without sudo or npm. Simply download, extract, and add to path.

This has the added advantage of easy backup if you are in the habit of backing up your entire home folder which I highly recommend. This also works with any version of Linux.

➤  cd ~
➤  wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
➤  mkdir phantomjs
➤  tar xjf phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 -C phantomjs
➤  echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/phantomjs/bin"' >> .profile
➤  source .profile
➤  phantomjs -v
2.1.1

The disadvantages are:

1. You will need to manually upgrade
2. Other users will not have access to this.

You could use a very simple shell script for installing/upgrading

#!/bin/sh
# install_phantomjs.sh $VERSION

$VERSION = $1
printf "Downloading PhantomJS $VERSION...\n"
wget "https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-$VERSION-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2"

printf "Extracting PhantomJS $VERSION to ~/phantomjs...\n"
mkdir ~/phantomjs
tar xjf phantomjs-$VERSION-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 -C ~/phantomjs

printf "Done! Make sure $HOME/phantomjs/bin is in your path.\n"

Or in a Dockerfile

# Download and setup PhantomJS
ENV PHANTOMJS_VERSION 2.1.1
RUN curl -fSL "https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-$PHANTOMJS_VERSION-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2" -o /tmp/phantomjs.tar.bz2 && \
  mkdir ~/phantomjs && \
  tar xjf /tmp/phantomjs.tar.bz2 -C ~/phantomjs && \
  rm /tmp/phantomjs.tar.bz2
ENV PATH /home/$USERNAME/phantomjs/bin:$PATH

Here is what I did on my ubuntu 16.04 machine

sudo apt-get update
sudo wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo mv path/where/you/downloaded/phantomjs  /usr/bin

and finally when I do

phantomjs -v

I get 2.1.1

After going through every answer of this thread. I think this is the best solution for installing and running phantomjs in ubuntu.