To get that headless Linux server capturing screenshots of web pages we need:
- Xvfb e.g. apt-get install xvfb
- Khtml2png2 (and dependencies)
After installation of the above the steps are below and I wrapped it up into a PHP script which also did some database tasks to keep records of the screenshots.
1.Check if the Xvfb is already running
ps aux | grep Xvfb
If it is running you might get a line similar to:
root 18905 1 0 Apr10 ? 00:00:04 Xvfb :0 -screen 0 800x600x24
If Xvfb is not running it will need initialised (these first two steps could also be wrapped into a shell script run on a schedule)
2. Initialise Xvfb
/usr/bin/Xvfb :0 -screen 0 800x600x24
3. Export the display:
DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
4. Run Khtml2Png2
/usr/local/bin/khtml2png2 –visual TrueColor –width 800 –height 600 –disable-js “http://www.google.com” /var/www/vhosts/website/images/webshots/whatever.png
Incidentally, Facebook do not like this browser and so screenshots of any Facebook pages fail.
