Can't run meshlabserver filters on a headless virtual environment

Question

I have meshlab installed on debian 9.4 using sudo apt-get install meshlab

first when trying to dump on the filters list

sudo xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 800x600x24" meshlabserver -d filters

it fails with this log

Loading Plugins:
Current Plugins Dir is: /usr/lib/meshlab/plugins 
Error in XMLFile: filter_measure.xml - line: -1, column: -1 - 
Error in XMLFile: filter_mutualinfo.xml - line: -1, column: -1 - 
Total 227 filtering actions
Total 13 io plugins
called here! 
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

and when trying to run a filter

sudo xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 800x600x24" meshlabserver -i original.obj -s /usr/lib/meshlab/plugins/filter_measure.xml

it fails and shows this log

script /usr/lib/meshlab/plugins/filter_measure.xml
Loading Plugins:
Current Plugins Dir is: /usr/lib/meshlab/plugins 
Error in XMLFile: filter_measure.xml - line: -1, column: -1 - 
Error in XMLFile: filter_mutualinfo.xml - line: -1, column: -1 - 
Total 227 filtering actions
Total 13 io plugins
Opening a file with extention obj
Mesh original.obj loaded has 22296 vn 7432 fn
Apply FilterScript: '/usr/lib/meshlab/plugins/filter_measure.xml'
Failure in parsing script /usr/lib/meshlab/plugins/filter_measure.xml
No root node with name FilterScript
Current rootname is MESHLAB_FILTER_INTERFACE

what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

It looks like trying to run meshlabserver in headless mode is a longshot... see the comments here: "There are some filters using [an OpenGL] rendering context & GPU (e.g. Ambient Occlusion), that were needed as batch-able operations. This is why we had to include a rendering context in the initialization of MeshLabServer. We do not have an 'official' workaround for this."

(Source: https://github.com/cnr-isti-vclab/meshlab/issues/78)

I think your best chance is to run this with X instead of trying to get it working in headless mode with xvfb-run...