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

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

#> wkhtmltopdf 
wkhtmltopdf: error while loading shared libraries: libXrender.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I noticed the lib is indeed in the /usr/lib folder but not the /lib folder. Does it matter which one of these it is in? Is there any way to get it to recognize it?

#> ls -l /usr/lib/libXrender.so*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    19 Feb 17 07:20 /usr/lib/libXrender.so -> libXrender.so.1.3.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    19 Feb 17 07:20 /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 -> libXrender.so.1.3.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39184 Jan 29  2010 /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1.3.0

#> ls -l /lib/libXrender.so*
ls: cannot access /lib/libXrender.so*: No such file or directory

I also checked dependencies of the lib

# ldd /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1
	libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002b9cb5afd000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002b9cb5e04000)
	libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00002b9cb6143000)
	libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00002b9cb6347000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002b9cb654d000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x0000555555554000)

This is running on an EngineYard gentoo server

The Unix packages x11-libs/libXext and x11-libs/libXrender are dependencies

Gentoo:

sudo emerge libXext libXrender

PDFkit wiki also explains in more detail how to get wkhtmltopdf working on engine yard. PDFkit wiki

Debian or Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libxrender1

I had the same, issue on Debian Squeeze, amd64. Installing libxrender1 solved the issue for me.

sudo apt-get install libxrender1

I need also do after:

sudo apt-get install libfontconfig1

Ran into this today on a RHEL7 machine running the static version of wkhtmltopdf. Solution was to install a few dependencies:

yum install libXrender libXext fontconfig 

If your system is 64 bits, and your software requires 32 bits libs, you need to add the flag "i386",

for example on ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libxrender1:i386

With Ubuntu 16 (from a fresh Docker install):

apt install -y libxrender1 libxext6

I was having the exact same problem! The solution, to me, was to install the 64bit version of wkhtmltoimage.

> sudo apt-get install xvfb

to install the dependency package.

Update the node-modules wkhtmltopdf index.js

> wkhtmltopdf.command = 'wkhtmltopdf'; to 'wkhtmltopdf.command = > 'xvfb-run wkhtmltopdf';'

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

I had this issue after rebuilding one of my containers, while before everything was working fine. All the answers I found online didn't work for me, so here's how I troubleshooted and resolved:

1. Check if all dependencies are there:

ldd path/to/your/binary/file/wkhtmltopdf-amd64

Here's what I got from that

linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007ffded169000)
libXrender.so.1 => not found
libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007f117bab0000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007f117b806000)
libXext.so.6 => not found
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 (0x00007f117b4cc000)
libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f117b2b2000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f117b0ae000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f117aea6000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f117ac89000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f117a907000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f117a5fe000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f117a3e8000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f117a01e000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f117bcf3000)
libexpat.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007f1179df5000)
libpng12.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng12.so.0 (0x00007f1179bd0000)
libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007f11799ae000)
libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6 (0x00007f11797aa000)
libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007f11795a4000)

Where I got "not found" means the dependencies were missing

2. apt update and install

Update your apt, as it's likely it won't find the libraries needed to install

apt-get update

Now I installed the missing dependencies that had the "not found" in the results above. Take note that for the libxrender and libxext I had to install libxrender-dev and libxext-dev.

apt-get install -y libxrender-dev libxext-dev

Note that there is an executable version of wkhtmltopdf distributed in a UPX compressed format, ldd and file will both report that this file is statically linked even though the payload requires shared libraries.

To check try

strings | fgrep UPX

If you see any "UPX" id strings then install upx and use "upx -d" on a copy of the file (as upx works in place) and then run ldd on the uncompressed file.

What worked for me (for future google searchs), on an Amazon Linux 2018:03

yum localinstall -y https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/8/AppStream/x86_64/os/Packages/libpng15-1.5.30-7.el8.x86_64.rpm
yum localinstall -y https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging/releases/download/0.12.6-1/wkhtmltox-0.12.6-1.amazonlinux2.x86_64.rpm