Problem with installing/upgrading jsreport on CentOS

teodoragardjeva

Hi,
we have been using jsreport for our main reporting tool for over two years.
We the developers are really pleased with the API that jsreport provides, but deployment on the server has been really a nightmare for us.
Installing JSreport on our PCs with Windows works like a charm, but it is not the case when it comes to the server.
Currently we are deploying jsreport on CentOS, which becomes harder and harder to maintain. We want to upgrade to latest jsreport, but can't install packages and run the server successfully.
It turns out that not all of the npm packages can be installed on CentOS easily, according to our colleague he experienced the same in the past when he had to setup initially jsreport on the server.
So we are ready to change. We are willing to setup the jsreport from scratch on a dedicated server.
That's why we will be grateful, if you advice us about the best way to maintain a jsreport in production environment. This are the questions that we need help for:

Which is the best suitable Linux based OS to be used for running jsreport?
Do you have some hardware limitations for RAM, CPU, ect.
What are the requirements other than node.js (>= 8.9), npm (>= 6.x)., we want to upgrade to latest jsreport version
What is the preferable way to build deployment packages: standard package deploy or docker usage. Currently we use docker but we face some difficulties, which may be caused by the server OS

These are the development packages that we need to install to run our reports, we use chrome-pdf, xlsx, and handlebars to load reports:

    "jsreport": "2.9.0",
    "jsreport-chrome-pdf": "1.8.0",
    "jsreport-cli": "2.2.4",
    "jsreport-pdf-utils": "1.8.0",
    "jsreport-version-control": "1.5.0"

Thanks for your help,
Teodora

jan_blaha

Hi Teodora,
glad you like jsreport.

The first that comes to my mind, do you run now docker on Centos host with Centos Based image?
Now to your questions...

Which is the best suitable Linux based OS to be used for running jsreport?

We can't say something is the best, but we use ubuntu on our internal servers as the host and no big problems so far.

Do you have some hardware limitations for RAM, CPU, ect.

This depends on the size of the reports. 4GB memory is basically always enough.
512MB is sometimes enough as well. The CPU reflects just the parallelization.
If you don't expect to run many reports in parallel, one CPU is enough.

What are the requirements other than node.js (>= 8.9), npm (>= 6.x)., we want to upgrade to latest jsreport version

The LTS version is typically recommended. Use node.js 12.x and corresponding npm.

What is the preferable way to build deployment packages: standard package deploy or docker usage. Currently we use docker but we face some difficulties, which may be caused by the server OS

My very personal rule would be. Do you have just one app on the server? No need to use docker. Just have an install script in your notes. When I run multiple apps I use docker. However, this really depends. If docker is your common technology you use on other servers, don't skip it here.

These are the development packages that we need to install to run our reports, we use chrome-pdf, xlsx, and handlebars to load reports:

All of the packages you have in the list are part of the jsreport package. No need to install them explicitly.
Just jsreport in the dependencies is enough.

We have the install scripts for the ubuntu and centos here. Do you have issues with it?
https://jsreport.net/learn/ubuntu
https://jsreport.net/learn/centos

You can also use our official docker images, then you don't need to deal with installing extra dependencies. We maintain this for you.
https://jsreport.net/learn/docker