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At the moment, I am developing a "kiosk" application for my Raspberry Pi. I decided to use Electron as it offers the key feature I need: Combining a web based UI with direct system an I/O access via node.js.

However, Electron refuses to run on my Raspberry Pi whereas it works just fine on the computer I am using for development. Nothing happens after issuing electron . in the terminal, the program just exits without showing a window or any errors in the command line. Any clues? I couldn't find any on the web so far. I installed Electron via npm install electron-prebuilt -g, which downloaded and installed the latest ARM-version.

If this is an unresolvable compatibility problem: Are there any good alternatives for Electron?

Thanks in advance!

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  • I have the exact same issue. Did you manage to find a solution for this by now? Commented Aug 17, 2015 at 13:30
  • Unfortunately, I couldn't find a solutution yet - I'm still working on it Commented Aug 17, 2015 at 13:40
  • Can you elaborate a bit on your setup? Which distribution to you use? How did you install nodejs? Which version of nodejs have you installed? Commented Aug 17, 2015 at 13:44
  • I use the Raspbian distribution as it was installed already for previous projects. Then I installed electron via the node package manager which I did successfully on my working machine as well. Nevertheless, (for private reasons) I won't be able to investigate this issue any further during the next two or three weeks. A recent suspicions is that there is just not enough RAM in order to execute Electron. Commented Aug 17, 2015 at 20:16
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    I tried it at home today with a newer raspbian version and a 16GB SD Card. The examples taken from github.com/hokein/electron-sample-apps now work for me. So it's either free space or the newer raspbian version. Commented Aug 18, 2015 at 13:49

4 Answers 4

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Unfortunately the reason for that error is that Electron currently does not support ARM devices. We will have to wait until it is implemented

See this issue https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/1702

-- Update

As noted by @skeggse, Electron now does support ARM.

  • 1 Get the dependecies going apt-get install libgtk2.0-0 libnotify4 libgconf2-4 libnss3 node npm

  • 2 Download the latest arm release called electron-...-linux-arm.zip from here

  • 3 unzip electron-...-linux-arm.zip

  • 4 go inside the folder and double click the file named electron

  • 5 Have fun!

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1 Comment

I don't think that's right - that issue is closed, and if you follow the issue chain you find #2094 which indicates that they cross-compile for ARM. It's entirely possible that their ARM cross-compile is incompatible with RPi, in which case (as @user650881 noted), you should compile from source.
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Depending on which Raspberry Pi you have it may be an incompatible binary. The electron prebuilt binaries, I believe, target armv7-hf. Try building electron from source. The instructions can be found here https://github.com/atom/electron/blob/master/docs/development/build-instructions-linux.md

Note that if you are interested in using hardware float support (at least prior to RPiB+) you might want to run Raspbian or another port with hard-float support. (ref)

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Build Electron, directly on an rPi? Prerequisites: At least 25GB disk space and 8GB RAM.
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Connect to Raspberry SSH as user pi, and execute this:

# Clone this repository git clone https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start # Go into the repository cd electron-quick-start # Install dependencies npm install # Set display export DISPLAY=:0 # Run the app npm start
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the problem is this part: export DISPLAY=:0 thanks mate :)
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This is a pretty broad question. You could try stopping on the first line of your application with:

electron --debug-brk=5858 .

This would help you determine whether it's an electron issue or an issue with your app.

http://electron.atom.io/docs/v0.30.0/tutorial/debugging-main-process/

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electron --debug-brk=5858 . produces no output as well. But I don't think it has to du with my app due to its simplicity (Just opens a window with a basic angular js app at the moment). Thanks for your help!

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