How to install wkhtmltopdf on a linux based (shared hosting) web server

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I have tried in all ways to get wkhtmltopdf installed on our web server but unfortunately it is not getting installed. I cannot access user/bin folder as stated in a tutorial on installation.

On the server in public_html folder there is a sub folder _vti_bin, I copied the file wkhtmltopdf-i386 from wkhtmltopdf-0.9.1-static-i386, but I am not able to execute it.

How to install wkhtmltopdf on (shared hosting) web server and get it working?

12 Answers

Chances are that without full access to this server (due to being a hosted account) you are going to have problems. I would go so far as to say that I think it is a fruitless endeavor--they have to lock servers down in hosted environments for good reason.

Call your hosting company and make the request to them to install it, but don't expect a good response--they typically won't install very custom items for single users unless there is a really good reason (bug fixes for example).

Lastly, depending on how familiar you are with server administration and what you are paying for server hosting now consider something like http://www.slicehost.com. $20 a month will get you a low grade web server (256 ram) and you can install anything you want. However, if you are running multiple sites or have heavy load the cost will go up as you need larger servers.

GL!

Latest update for CentOS:

  • sudo yum install -y libpng libjpeg openssl icu libX11 libXext libXrender xorg-x11-fonts-Type1 xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi
  • wget https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf/releases/download/0.12.4/wkhtmltox-0.12.4_linux-generic-amd64.tar.xz
  • tar -xvf wkhtmltox-0.12.4_linux-generic-amd64.tar
  • sudo mv wkhtmltox/bin/* /usr/local/bin/
  • check installation success: wkhtmltopdf -V
  • rm -rf wkhtmltox
  • rm -f wkhtmltox-0.12.4_linux-generic-amd64.tar

Version 12.5 of wkhtmltopdf only lists DEB files on their download page now. Being a mac user and not knowing much linux or what DEB files were I couldn't use the solutions posted.

This page helped me get past the knew twist of downloading a DEB file: http://www.g-loaded.eu/2008/01/28/how-to-extract-rpm-or-deb-packages/

Basically what I did was:

  1. Downloaded from https://wkhtmltopdf.org/downloads.html
  2. Unzipped the DEB file.
  3. Unzipped data.tar.xz
  4. Uploaded the binary in the unzipped 'usr' folder from step 3 (usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf)

Then I found out that the 'exec' function was disabled on my host. So make sure you can specifically run 'exec' if you're using PHP to run this. "Can I run the wkhtmltopdf binary" isn't specific enough. My fault.

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