Building PDFs: net::ERR_ABORTED

[csgillespie]

I'm having trouble building PDF slides.

• Ubuntu 22.04
• R 4.2
• Tried multiple files, same error
• It works first time on my colleagues' laptops; except they are using Ubuntu 20.04
• Not sure what else to provide (I know, vague bug, sorry)

❯ xaringanBuilder::build_pdf("chapter1.Rmd")
✔ Building chapter1.Rmd into chapter1.html ... done
✖ Building chapter1.html into chapter1.pdf ... failed
Error in force(expr) : 
  Failed to generate output. Reason: net::ERR_ABORTED
Run `rlang::last_error()` to see where the error occurred.
✖ [77-support-building-slides-to-pdf*]
❯ last_error()
<error/rlang_error>
Error:
! Failed to generate output. Reason: net::ERR_ABORTED
Caused by error in `force()`:
! Failed to generate output. Reason: net::ERR_ABORTED
---
Backtrace:
 1. xaringanBuilder::build_pdf("chapter1.Rmd")
 2. xaringanBuilder:::build_pdf_simple(step_html, output_file)
      at xaringanBuilder/R/pdf.R:92:8
 3. base::tryCatch(...)
      at xaringanBuilder/R/pdf.R:98:4
 4. base tryCatchList(expr, classes, parentenv, handlers)
 5. base tryCatchOne(expr, names, parentenv, handlers[[1L]])
 6. value[[3L]](cond)
Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see the full context.
✔ [77-support-building-slides-to-pdf*]

---

❯ sessionInfo()
R version 4.2.0 (2022-04-22)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/atlas/libblas.so.3.10.3
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/atlas/liblapack.so.3.10.3

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C               LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8     LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8    LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8      
 [8] LC_NAME=C                  LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

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

other attached packages:
[1] jrPresentation2_0.3.3

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_1.0.8.3          gert_1.6.0            ps_1.7.0              rprojroot_2.0.3       digest_0.6.29         prompt_1.0.1          utf8_1.2.2            prettycode_1.1.0      R6_2.5.1             
[10] xaringanBuilder_0.0.9 sys_3.4               evaluate_0.15         xaringan_0.24         pillar_1.7.0          rlang_1.0.2           lazyeval_0.2.2        callr_3.7.0           jquerylib_0.1.4      
[19] rmarkdown_2.14        config_0.3.1          desc_1.4.1            servr_0.24            stringr_1.4.0         httpuv_1.6.5          compiler_4.2.0        lintr_2.0.1           xfun_0.31            
[28] pkgconfig_2.0.3       askpass_1.1           htmltools_0.5.2       openssl_2.0.0         websocket_1.4.1       tibble_3.1.7          fansi_1.0.3           memuse_4.2-1          crayon_1.5.1         
[37] withr_2.5.0           later_1.3.0           jsonlite_1.8.0        lifecycle_1.0.1       magrittr_2.0.3        credentials_1.3.2     cli_3.3.0             stringi_1.7.6         cachem_1.0.6         
[46] rprofile_0.1.11       fs_1.5.2              promises_1.2.0.1      remotes_2.4.2         rex_1.2.1             xml2_1.3.3            bslib_0.3.1           ellipsis_0.3.2        vctrs_0.4.1          
[55] cyclocomp_1.1.0       tools_4.2.0           glue_1.6.2            rdoc_0.1.0            rsconnect_0.8.25      processx_3.5.3        parallel_4.2.0        fastmap_1.1.0         yaml_2.3.5           
[64] chromote_0.1.0        memoise_2.0.1         knitr_1.39            pagedown_0.18         sass_0.4.1           

[gadenbuie]

The version of build_pdf() being called here is essentially a small wrapper around pagedown::chrome_print(), so I'd suggest trying that function on its own to see if you can get a more informative error message.

To closely replicate our flow, you could use build_html() to build the html file and then call

pagedown::chrome_print(
  input  = "chapter1.html",
  output = "chapter1.pdf"
)

[gadenbuie]

It does smell like there's something wrong with chrome/chromote going on here

[jhelvy]

So it's working on Ubuntu 20.04 but not Ubuntu 22.04? Sounds like an issue with Chrome.

Another check is to try and print some other webpage, like pagedown::chrome_print("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language)")

If you get a similar error, then that should at least help narrow down the source.

[csgillespie]

So this is odd. This works

pagedown::chrome_print("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language)",
                       output = "wiki.pdf")

But this doesn't

pagedown::chrome_print(
  input  = "chapter1.html",
  output = "chapter1.pdf"
)

---

Chapter1.Rmd now looks like

---
title: "Introduction"
output:
  xaringan::moon_reader
---

[jhelvy]

Can you try this?

pagedown::chrome_print(
  input  = "file://chapter1.html",
  output = "chapter1.pdf"
)

[csgillespie]

❯ pagedown::chrome_print(
  input  = "file://chapter1.html",
  output = "chapter1.pdf"
)
Error in force(expr) : 
  Failed to generate output. Reason: net::ERR_INVALID_URL
Run `rlang::last_error()` to see where the error occurred.
✖ [main* ↓]
❯ last_error()
<error/rlang_error>
Error:
! Failed to generate output. Reason: net::ERR_INVALID_URL
---
Backtrace:
 1. pagedown::chrome_print(input = "file://chapter1.html", output = "chapter1.pdf")
 2. later with_temp_loop_maybe(...)
 3. later::with_loop(loop, expr)
 4. base::force(expr)
Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see the full context.
✔ [main* ↓]
❯ last_trace()
<error/rlang_error>
Error:
! Failed to generate output. Reason: net::ERR_INVALID_URL
---
Backtrace:
    ▆
 1. └─pagedown::chrome_print(input = "file://chapter1.html", output = "chapter1.pdf")
 2.   └─later with_temp_loop_maybe(...)
 3.     └─later::with_loop(loop, expr)
 4.       └─base::force(expr)

[gadenbuie]

You'll need the absolute path prefixed with file://, which ends up being file:///Users/colin/chapter1.html

[csgillespie]

You'll need the absolute path prefixed with file://, which ends up being file:///Users/colin/chapter1.html

Duh! I did that the first time, and got an error. Must have had a typo :(

pagedown::chromepagedown::chrome_print(
  input  = "file:///data/ncsg3/gitlab/training/r/introduction/slides/chapter1.html",
  output = "chapter1.pdf"
)

works!

[gadenbuie]

But you still get the error when using build_pdf()? I wonder if you could try

debug(xaringanBuilder:::build_pdf_simple)
xaringanBuilder::build_pdf("chapter1.Rmd")

And check that the file path for input is correct. Some other things to take a look at:

1. Does your source doc use self_contained = TRUE?
2. Does your source doc reference files from other directories, like a CSS file in a parent directory?

The net::ERR_ABORTED error seems like maybe it's some kind of 404-equivalent error, but beyond that I'm just making guesses. I was surprised that pagedown::chrome_print() worked as expected, I was thinking that would give us a better hint. 🤔

[csgillespie]

My chapter1.Rmd is now minimal. It's only five lines:

---
title: "Introduction"
output:
  xaringan::moon_reader
---

This

input = "file:///data/ncsg3/gitlab/training/r/introduction/slides/chapter1.html"
output = "/data/ncsg3/gitlab/training/r/introduction/slides/chapter1.pdf"
pagedown::chrome_print(input = input, output = output, verbose = 2)

works fine. But if I remove the explicit file:://, I get the error.

---

Interestingly,

---
title: "Introduction"
---

works with no issues. So there is something odd around xaringan for me.

[wesleyburr]

One more tiny piece of information on this: Ubuntu 20.04, Chrome Version 101.0.4951.54 (Official Build) (64-bit). Similarly having failures on build_pdf() -

✖ Building xaringanBuilder_3805fa20d95692.html into xaringanBuilder_3805fa78b5fac.pdf ... failed
Error in force(expr) :
Failed to generate output. Reason: Failed to open http://127.0.0.1:5677/figure/infer_oregon3.png (HTTP status code: 404)

Adding the manual explicit full file path to the input sails through:

xaringanBuilder:::build_pdf_simple("file:///home/path/to/file/here/index.html", "index.pdf")

Input is just a bog-standard set of slides for a presentation. Maybe the 404 that's bouncing reinforces the comment by gadenbuie above.

[csgillespie]

@wesleyburr / @gadenbuie I had a "similar" issue with RStudio. Essentially when opening an HTML file, it used firefox. The issue was that the default browser for opening a file was firefox.

Firefox can't open local assets on my machine, so could, I suppose, generate the above errors. I wonder if that is the issue?