ERROR: connect: connection refused (ECONNREFUSED) when opening new window

[kleskjr]

I can't go around a problem of using PlotlyJS from my terminal (works fine in Atom). The issue is reported before JuliaPlots/PlotlyJS.jl#33, and similarly #82 . The thing is that even locally, I am not able to open a window with Blink.Window()

julia> Blink.Window()
ERROR: connect: connection refused (ECONNREFUSED)
Stacktrace:
 [1] try_yieldto(::Base.##298#299{Task}, ::Task) at ./event.jl:189
 [2] wait() at ./event.jl:234
 [3] wait(::Condition) at ./event.jl:27
 [4] stream_wait(::TCPSocket, ::Condition, ::Vararg{Condition,N} where N) at ./stream.jl:42
 [5] wait_connected(::TCPSocket) at ./stream.jl:258
 [6] connect at ./stream.jl:983 [inlined]
 [7] connect(::IPv4, ::Int64) at ./socket.jl:742
 [8] #try_connect#4(::Float64, ::Int64, ::Function, ::IPv4, ::Vararg{Any,N} where N) at /home/nic/.julia/v0.6/Blink/src/AtomShell/process.jl:62
 [9] #init#5(::Bool, ::Function) at /home/nic/.julia/v0.6/Blink/src/AtomShell/process.jl:76
 [10] (::Blink.AtomShell.#kw##init)(::Array{Any,1}, ::Blink.AtomShell.#init) at ./<missing>:0
 [11] #shell#8(::Bool, ::Function) at /home/nic/.julia/v0.6/Blink/src/AtomShell/process.jl:114
 [12] Blink.AtomShell.Window() at /home/nic/.julia/v0.6/Blink/src/AtomShell/window.jl:37

The machine is under Ubuntu 18.04, tried both with Julia 0.6.2 and 0.6.3. Using xvfb-run julia and Blink.Atom.install() brought no success. Also increasing the input parameter values in function try_connect(args...; interval = 0.5, attempts = 300) didn't help. Any idea for a workaround is welcome.

[kleskjr]

I just installed the older ubuntu (16.04) in a virtual box and everythingworked fine, while a virtual newer Ubuntu (18.04) has the same issue as the local machine. Is it possible that the problem is in some blocked connections on a system level?

[pfitzseb]

That's almost certainly the case -- you could try looking for a port you know is free and set the BLINK_PORT environment variable to that before loading Blink.

[fqroldan]

I have the same problem as the op. How would I go about locating a free port and setting the BLINK_PORT environment variable to it?

[twavv]

It seems that the ECONNREFUSED happens because the electron process dies immediately, and might just be a red herring for not having a complete enough system (in terms of libraries).

I tried running electron manually. You can get the binary path via

julia> Blink.AtomShell.electron()
"/root/.julia/packages/Blink/vKGzM/deps/atom/electron"

I saw that it kept complaining about nonexistant libraries. I ended up installing...

• libgtk-3-0
• libxss1
• libgconf-2-4
• libnss3
• libasound2
• libx11-xcb1

and finally got it to work.

[fqroldan]

Yes! Works for me as well

[mbauman]

Just as another breadcrumb: this can happen if you're forwarding X11 over a slow connection and you hit the timeout before Julia's able to connect to the electron app. #199 should help this case.

[twavv]

Closing this. Please open a new issue if you're having problems. :^)