How can I set up & run PhantomJS on Ubuntu? - linux

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

Install from package manager:
sudo apt-get install phantomjs

Answer 5

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
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

Answer 6

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

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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 .

Answer 9

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 ..

Answer 10

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

Answer 11

See link
Installation guide is in ...
https://gist.github.com/julionc/7476620
And run in terminal with this command
phantomjs --webdriver=4444

Answer 12

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

Answer 13

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.

Answer 14

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.

Answer 15

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

Answer 16

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)

Answer 17

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

Answer 18

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

Answer 19

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

Answer 20

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.

Answer 21

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

Answer 22

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

Answer 23

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

Answer 24

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:
You will need to manually upgrade
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

Answer 25

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.