Graphicsmagick not working in Elastic Beanstalk with nodejs and S3

Question

I'm using nodejs and graphicsmagick to process images with text, then streaming the final jpg to S3.

Using postman, I was able to test this flow on my localhost and everything works fine. However, I'm having issues now that I moved it to Elastic Beanstalk. When I post to the endpoint, it uploads a blank file to S3 and there are no errors logged in EB. I think it has something to do with the software but am a bit stuck. Any advice appreciated! Thanks!

Top file is from localhost, bottom file is from Elastic Beanstalk: http://cl.ly/image/0O231k171N0W

var gm              = require('gm');
var appRoot         = require('app-root-path').path;

function createImage(caption, res) {
    var originalImage   = '/images/2015-02-24.jpg';
    var textColor       = 'white';

    gm(appRoot + originalImage)
        .fill(textColor)
        .font( appRoot + '/fonts/BentonSans-Book.otf')
        .drawText(0, 0, caption, 'Center')
        .stream(function(err, stdout, stderr) {
            sendToS3(err, stdout, stderr, originalImage, res);
        });
}

function sendToS3(err, stdout, stderr, originalImage, client_response) {
    var imageName       = shortId.generate();
    var buff            = new Buffer('');

    stdout.on('data', function(data) {
        buff = Buffer.concat([buff, data]);
    });

    stdout.on('end', function(data) {
        var data = {
            Bucket: S3_bucket,
            Key: imageName + '.jpg',
            Body: buff,
            ContentType: mime.lookup(originalImage)
        };

        s3.putObject(data, function(err, res) {
            client_response.send('done');
        });
    });
}

===============================================================

EDIT: Instead of streaming to S3, I changed it to write directly to the filesystem. The error being thrown in AWS EB logs is:

err { [Error: Command failed: gm convert: Request did not return an 
image.] code: 1, signal: null }

I believe I'm missing some dependencies for ImageMagick. Any thoughts?

This is from running convert --version in my local terminal:

Version: ImageMagick 6.8.9-7 Q16 x86_64 2014-08-31
http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2014 ImageMagick Studio LLC
Features: DPC Modules
Delegates: bzlib freetype jng jpeg ltdl lzma png xml zlib

This is from running convert --version in my EC2 instance (The Delegates section is empty):

Version: ImageMagick 6.9.1-1 Q16 x86_64 2015-04-10
http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2015 ImageMagick Studio LLC
License: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/license.php
Features: DPC OpenMP
Delegates (built-in): 

Answer 1

How are you installing GraphicsMagick on your EC2 instance in ElasticBeanstalk? Are you using a custom AMI? The default AMI (at least the ones I've used) didn't have GraphicsMagick, I don't know about ImageMagick though.

You can use container commands to install packages with yum. I used the one below on a project where I needed GraphicsMagick.

Create a folder at the root of your project with the name ".ebextensions." Inside of that folder, create a file called "package.config" with the following contents:

commands:
  01-command:
    command: yum install -y --enablerepo=epel GraphicsMagick

This will install it when the instance is created. I have a feeling this should resolve your issue, if not you may want to use command line options for yum to use the same version or install the delegates as well:

commands:
  01-command:
    command: yum install -y --enablerepo=epel GraphicsMagick
  02-command:
    command: yum install -y --enablerepo=epel GraphicsMagick-devel

Answer 2

I lowered my elasticbeanstalks' nodejs version from node 12 to node 8.15.0, and yum CAN find Graphicsmagick and installs it successfully. (I listed Graphicsmagick in .ebextensions/packages.config) Hope this will help someone!