Warning: Error in <Anonymous>: unable to start device 'png'

shiny
,
1

I have a markdown file that runs perfectly in its current version on two different local machines. I've been able to load a previous version of this file to my shiny-server and it worked fine. I added a few code chunks and text and cloned the project from my GitHub to my shiny-server again and now I'm getting "Error: An error has occurred. Check your logs or Contact the app author for clarification."
I checked the log at /var/log/shiny-server and get this:

Blockquote
Warning in (function (filename = "Rplot%03d.png", width = 480, height = 480, :
cairo error 'invalid value (typically too big) for the size of the input (surface, pattern, etc.)'
Quitting from lines 279-322 (2021_Report.Rmd)
Warning: Error in : unable to start device 'png'
131:
129: chunk_device
128: eng_r
127: block_exec
126: call_block
125: process_group.block
122: process_file
121: knitr::knit
120:
115:
99: doc
98: renderUI
97: func
84: renderFunc
83: output$reactivedoc
3:
1: rmarkdown::run
Blockquote

I found a post that seems similar to my problem here
I checked everything mentioned there and rebuilt R from source as described but I'm still getting the same log output.

Are there other logs I can check?

capabilities() looks like this

Blockquote
capabilities()
jpeg png tiff tcltk X11 aqua
TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE FALSE
http/ftp sockets libxml fifo cledit iconv
TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE
NLS profmem cairo ICU long.double libcurl
TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
Blockquote

I'm on Amazon Linux running R-4.1.1

if it helps, I only have two Cairo libraries
cairo.x86_64
cairo-devel.x86_64

I assume these are the versions of libcairo2-dev for Amazon Linux since I can't get libcairo2-dev to install.

The other thing that is confusing me is that where the log says "quitting from lines 279-322"
I have always assumed this is the code block where the error is occurring. However, this code block used to run fine on the shiny-server. it wasn't something we added new. Also, the part that says "(function (filename = "Rplot%03d.png", width = 480, height = 480" is not text that appears within those lines or anywhere in my markdown file. I assume this is something within a function that is being called from inside something in the mentioned lines.

I'm very confused at this one. usually when I've had any issue getting a markdown file to run on our shiny-server it has been a missing package and I have easily installed the package and the application has worked. I'm not sure what to do. Any help would be much appreciated.

2

update, I removed the code block from where the log said the application was quitting and re-uploaded to the server and the error has moved down to the next code block, now quitting from lines 282-284
This leads me to believe that the issue is with something else in the file but I'm not sure what it is or where to look.

3

This topic was automatically closed 54 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

If you have a query related to it or one of the replies, start a new topic and refer back with a link.

4

Whew - this is much belated :sweat_smile: , but just as an FYI this type of "System Dependency" issue with R is usually a better fit for the "R Admins" category :smile: There are generally more people there who can help out with this type of issue!

That said, hopefully you have worked around / found a solution by now!! Usually the best way to iterate on this type of thing is to try to create a minimally reproducible example in an "interactive" R session (rather than continuing to run the Rmd, which presumably takes a while / is complicated / etc.).

I believe this thread / comment may have a useful tidbit on this issue! If not, please open a new thread in R Admins so we can try to help get it resolved!