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AWS EC2 Deployment

This guide describes how to setup an Amazon AWS EC2 instance to run the PhotoEditor SDK Server. The server supports GPU (WebGL) and CPU (Canvas) based rendering.

Tested on April 26th 2018, PESDK Master on commit 5ac69eddf07da2a9ab573f3436be223a1ec01b75

CPU Based Setup

Just use any AWS instance you prefer (the more memory, the better) and specify canvas as the preferredRenderer in the PesdkServer.editors options. This will limit rendering to the CPU and doesn’t require a GPU, but will probably yield lower performance compared to WebGL in the future. Once you created your instance, just follow the steps in ‘PESDK Server Setup’.

GPU Based Setup to use WebGL Renderer

Running a headless WebGL server requires some upfront setup work, but will pay off with increased performance in the future. To run the PESDKServer on AWS EC2, follow these steps:

Recommended Instance Type: g2.2xlarge

Choose an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS AMI that’s compatible with the g2.2xlarge instance (ami-f90a4880 in eu-west-1).

Nvidia Driver Installation

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Reboot after driver installation

sudo reboot now

Configure X Server with a virtual display :0

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev
sudo nvidia-xconfig -a --use-display-device=None --virtual=1280x1024

$ nvidia-smi should already show the K520 GPU.

Connect the GPU to the virtual display

Modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf adding BusID "0:3:0" in the Section “Device”` section:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GRID K520"
    BusID          "0:3:0"
EndSection

Launch X Server

sudo /usr/bin/X :0 &

PESDK Server Setup

  1. Clone repository / install npm package 
    scp -i "AWS.pem" /path/to/folder ubuntu@<address>:/home/ubuntu/pesdk
cd /home/ubuntu/pesdk
  2. Install NodeJS 
    curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo bash
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
  3. Install required dependencies and build PhotoEditorSDK 
    sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev libjpeg-dev libpango1.0-dev \
                  libgif-dev build-essential g++
npm install
npm run-script build
  4. To run the Server you’ll need a valid license files. You may upload this using scp and just store it within the instance. The file is then passed to the SDK using the -l license.json parameter or the files contents are .

Known Errors

Missing Display

TypeError: Cannot set property 'id' of null

Export the currently attached virtual display:

export DISPLAY=:0

Borked WebGL.node

node: symbol lookup error: /home/ubuntu/pesdk/node_modules/gl/build/Release/webgl.node: undefined symbol: _Z15XextFindDisplayP15_XExtensionInfoP9_XDisplay

This seems to be caused by a hardcoded display within webgl.node. To fix it, you’ll have to manually rebuild webgl.node as described in steps 1-6 of the packages repository:

  1. Switch to home directory: cd ~/
  2. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/stackgl/headless-gl.git
  3. Switch to the headless gl directory: cd headless-gl
  4. Initialize the angle submodule: git submodule init
  5. Update the angle submodule: git submodule update
  6. Install npm dependencies: npm install
  7. Run node-gyp to generate build scripts: npm run rebuild

You’ve now built a ‘working’ webgl.node version for your current setup. Replace the prebuilt one installed in the gl module with the following command:

cp ~/headless-gl/build/Release/webgl.node ~/pesdk/node_modules/gl/build/Release/webgl.node

For more details on this issue, take a look at the discussion on GitHub.