Prebuilt gRPC doesn't work with the Ubuntu 18.04 nodejs runtime.

[przemek-instapage]

While trying to use Google PubSub Node.js library that uses grpc-node lib I get an error:
node_modules/grpc/src/node/extension_binary/node-v57-linux-x64-glibc/grpc_node.node: undefined symbol: SSL_library_init

I have tried to reinstall this module but that does not help.

[nicolasnoble]

Please give us more details on this. What's your version of nodejs, operating system, environnement, and any other detail that might be helpful.

[przemek-instapage]

Here you are:

$ node -v
v8.10.0

$ cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04 LTS"

$ npm -v
3.5.2

$ apt list --installed | grep ssl

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

libgnutls-openssl27/bionic,now 3.5.18-1ubuntu1 amd64 [installed]
libio-socket-ssl-perl/bionic,bionic,now 2.056-1 all [installed]
libnet-smtp-ssl-perl/bionic,bionic,now 1.04-1 all [installed]
libnet-ssleay-perl/bionic,now 1.84-1build1 amd64 [installed]
libssl-dev/bionic,now 1.1.0g-2ubuntu4 amd64 [installed]
libssl-doc/bionic,bionic,now 1.1.0g-2ubuntu4 all [installed]
libssl1.0.0/bionic,now 1.0.2n-1ubuntu5 amd64 [installed]
libssl1.1/bionic,now 1.1.0g-2ubuntu4 amd64 [installed,automatic]
openssl/bionic,now 1.1.0g-2ubuntu4 amd64 [installed]
perl-openssl-defaults/bionic,now 3build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
python-openssl/bionic,bionic,now 17.5.0-1ubuntu1 all [installed,automatic]
ssl-cert/bionic,bionic,now 1.0.39 all [installed]

Do you need anything more?

[nicolasnoble]

Is your version of node installed via nvm or apt ?

[przemek-instapage]

Via apt nodejs/bionic,now 8.10.0~dfsg-2 amd64 [installed]

[nicolasnoble]

Great, thanks. I can then make a bug report to Ubuntu, because I can confirm their nodejs package is broken. That's the rootcause issue here.

[nicolasnoble]

In the meantime, you can make this work for your machine by doing an npm rebuild --build-from-source. I just confirmed this works.

[nicolasnoble]

For reference, the Ubuntu package is breaking the node-gyp spec explained here: https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/wiki/Linking-to-OpenSSL

[przemek-instapage]

@nicolasnoble I have got the same error message, even after using npm rebuild --build-from-source command.

[nicolasnoble]

Hmmm, that's odd. I guess I am missing something. Could you try reproducing everything inside of docker? I may have been too quick on my conclusion.

$ docker run -t -i ubuntu:18.04 bash -l
# apt update
# apt install nodejs npm
# npm install ...

[nicolasnoble]

Or more specifically, if you could give us a reproduction case that exhibits the issue within a ubuntu:18.04 docker image, that'd be great.

[przemek-instapage]

@nicolasnoble while using ubuntu docker image it worked without any problems at all. I guess there is an issue with my environment only...

[nicolasnoble]

So that's disturbing. The nodejs runtime is supposed to expose its SSL symbols to any extension. For some reasons, on your environment only, this doesn't seem to work fine. There might be interference caused by another package or daemon that would impose this. My gut feeling would be apparmor, but it's a long shot.

Could you check the contents of your syslog or dmesg buffer as you try to load the extension to see if something somewhere is denying the load?

Given it's on your environment only, I would be tempted to close this one as unreproducible, but I'd still love to get to the bottom of this.

How did you install your environment? Is it desktop? Did you upgrade from a former version of ubuntu? Did you install any custom package? Maybe give me the full output of dpkg -l, and we can try reproducing your issue in a virtualbox desktop, if you did install a desktop version.