Puppeteer is a Node.js library developed by the Chrome team that allows you to control a headless Chrome or Chromium browser. It can be used for a wide range of tasks such as web scraping, automating form submissions, generating PDFs, and more.

Here's a guide on how to install Puppeteer globally on an Ubuntu server:

1. First, make sure that your Ubuntu server has Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager) installed by running the following command:

node -v npm -v 

2. If Node.js and npm are not installed, you can install them by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm 

3. Next, you will need to install puppeteer globally by running the following command:

sudo npm install -g puppeteer 

4. Puppeteer requires a version of Chromium to be installed on your server in order to run. You can install the latest version of Chromium by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser 

5. After installing Chromium, you will need to install the necessary dependencies to run puppeteer on Ubuntu by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install libx11-xcb1 libxcomposite1 libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgbm1 libgcc1 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 

6. Now you should be able to use puppeteer globally on your Ubuntu server by running it from any directory.

Note: you might want to check for the latest version of puppeteer and Chromium before installing them.
Also, depending on your server setup, you might need to run the npm commands with sudo or as a user with appropriate permissions.

With this setup, you should be able to use Puppeteer in your Node.js scripts to control a headless Chrome browser and automate various tasks.

23 January 2023 (last updated 1 year ago)

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Written by Dennis Smink

Dennis brings over 6 years of hands-on experience in server management, specializing in optimizing web services for scalability and security.

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