Bob on Linux trouble getting started

[Dave]

Hi (Jed),

I recently switched to KDE and now I can't get Bob working.  I think it might have something to do with the Numix theme that comes with the Kubuntu setup.  Here's the error message:

$ "/home/david/Downloads/BobLinux (1)"

NodeSettings - Parsed raw settings.

TiddlyWiki version 5.1.18 with Bob version 1.1.0

Serving on 127.0.0.1:8080

(press ctrl-C to exit)

/snapshot/BobEXE/node_modules/openurl/openurl.js:39

                throw error;

                ^

Error: Icon theme "Numix-Circle" not found.

    at Socket.<anonymous> (/snapshot/BobEXE/node_modules/openurl/openurl.js:35:25)

    at Socket.emit (events.js:164:20)

    at endReadableNT (_stream_readable.js:1054:12)

    at _combinedTickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:138:11)

    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:180:9)

That also happens when I run it from where it normally lives.

Is there an easy fix for this besides not using Plasma (KDE)?

thanks,

Dave

[Jed Carty]

I am not certain how to fix that error, it is coming from the openurl node module that makes the browser open automatically and I haven't dug into it much.

If you don't care about opening the browser automatically than the easiest fix is to edit the config.json in the settings folder of your index wiki and set the suppressBrowser key to true. Then you will have to open your browser and go to localhost:8080 yourself instead of having it open automatically.

It doesn't really fix the problem but it should avoid it and it is probably easier than switching your desktop environment. I will add an issue on the repo to figure out if I can find a better way to work around the problem.

[h0p3]

 Disclaimer: I am grateful to have the chance to use this software. I see it as my responsibility to get software working on my machines, and I do not mean to even imply an entitled attitude here (the chance to use Bob is a gift). Furthermore, I'm new to Bob (Jed knows what he's doing).

Looking through my Wiki Audit notes, I can tell you that I was unable to get BobEXE to run on Ubuntu servers or i3 Manjaro (each with different errors). Running it manually, however, has worked nicely for me on various linux machines. My noob recommendation is to do it manually.

[Dave]

Thanks Jed, I'll try that.

Also h0p3, by "use it manually" do you mean by the "plugin" method rather than the "exe" version?

[Jed Carty]

I made the BobEXE version as mostly an afterthought because a few people said they were having trouble setting up node and it was easier for me to just make that than to try and debug so many problems with installing node. But I never use it so it gets far less attention than the plugin version.

The big downside of making something that 'just works' is that it just works in a very limited set of situations.

My hope is that anyone who has a situation where BobEXE doesn't work can setup the plugin version without too much trouble. Running BobEXE on a headless server isn't going to work well because it tries to open a browser automatically by default.

[h0p3]

Correct! It will cost you a few lines in the terminal to get it up and running, and it's easy to reproduce in every environment I've used. I don't know if this is the correct practice, but I'm running a Bob instance on different ports for each family member on my machine (though my wife wants to go back to singlefile for remote networking performance reasons). I run it from cron and have some other scripting too. I still have a ton to learn about this tool, but I don't see what advantage the executable would have for me in the long run.

[Jed Carty]

Not to derail the conversation too much, but why do you have different instances for each person?

[h0p3]

It is possible I have no idea what I'm doing. In fact, that's why I'm approaching this hedged-conservatively.

I'd prefer to make sure we do not contaminate each other's work or processes (in the immortal words of The Offspring: "You gotta keep 'em separated."). It is possible one of us could accidentally affect the other, and this seemed to be a safer route.

Modularizing the setup makes it so that someone can change their mind about how they want it done without much trouble. Switching my wife back to singlefile mode (we kept all the singlefile infrastructure in place and added Bob as a backend with a script to output the singlefile each minute for distribution) just took commenting two lines on crontab and killing her Bob process; we can turn it back on about that easily as well. We've also set up instant staging with a script for Bob in order to spin up new Bob instances painlessly so that we can experiment and because we were having trouble upgrading Bob.

The ability to spin up multiple wikis is something I want for each of us, and I don't want it intermingled. I want to hand the full power of Bob to each person. Perhaps relatedly, I am considering the possibility that permissions and P2P/Federation structures may be built leveraging multiple wikis as well. I simply don't know enough about it, and this seemed kosher to me.

I've crashed my Bob server a few times so far, and I don't want other people to lose their access or work because I broke mine (and vice versa). I encounter the browser nag which asks if my process has stalled/wait often enough, and I never want anyone touching my maxed out core (I simply don't know how multi-threaded the tooling is either). Process compartmentalization seems to have helped here.

Of course, I may be thinking about this all wrongheaded. I'm grateful for your thinking about this with me.

[Matthew Lauber]

Not to resurrect an old thread, but Dave, do you by chance use a alpha or beta version of chrome?  I recently ran into this issue, and the only thing I can recall changing is I manually updated chrome due to the latest 0-day that came out.  

Hoping I can track this down.

Thanks,

Matt Lauber

[Dave]

I think I just did what Jed had suggested and now I just have a shortcut that does this if Bob seems to have crashed:

pkill node ;cd /home/david/SyncthingFolders/Bob/TiddlyWiki5;node ./tiddlywiki.js Wikis/BobWiki  --wsserver;http://127.0.0.1:8080/#Agenda

And after waiting 10 seconds or so I click the toolbar bookmark for the address because that last bit in the code doesn't work.