[Reporting] Screenshot feature does not work in Windows, with Kibana running in the background

[tsullivan]

Kibana version: 7.x+

Elasticsearch version:

Server OS version: Windows

Browser version:

Browser OS version:

Original install method (e.g. download page, yum, from source, etc.): download page

Describe the bug:
Running Kibana from the Windows command prompt works fine with Reporting, but when Kibana is started as a background task service, a bug causes Reporting jobs to fail.

The reason is due to an open bug with a Reporting dependency, described here: puppeteer/puppeteer#4290

Steps to reproduce:

1. Use a Windows service manager to create a service for Kibana that will run it in the background
2. Try to generate any PNG or PDF report of a visualization or dashboard.
3. The job will fail with few if any errors, due to job timeout.

Expected behavior:
Just as it works when running Kibana from the command line, Reporting should work when Kibana is running in a background task service.

A possible workaround is to create the Windows background task service as an "interactive" service, but that solution hasn't been verified.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-reporting-services (Team:Reporting Services)

[LeeDr]

We've been using a Windows 2012 Server VM in the integration-test repo for a long time which runs Kibana as a service and reporting works OK on it. Here's the details of our setup;

1. the default distribution zip is unzipped to a path like C:/windowsInstalls/7.10.0/kibana
2. kibana.yml;

telemetry.url: https://telemetry-staging.elastic.co/xpack/v2/send
telemetry.optInStatusUrl: https://telemetry-staging.elastic.co/opt_in_status/v2/send
logging.verbose: true
csp.strict: false
timelion.ui.enabled: true
server.ssl.enabled: true
elasticsearch.ssl.verificationMode: none
xpack.security.enabled: true
xpack.maps.showMapVisualizationTypes: true
elasticsearch.username: kibana
# elasticsearch.password: see keystore
xpack.reporting.encryptionKey: ThisIsReportingEncryptionKey1234
xpack.security.encryptionKey: ThisIsSecurityEncryptionKey12345
xpack.encryptedSavedObjects.encryptionKey: ThisIsSavedObjectEncryptionKey12
xpack.reporting.queue.timeout: 180000
elasticsearch.hosts: https://elastic:<our password here>@localhost:9200
server.ssl.certificate: ./config/kibana.crt
server.ssl.key: ./config/kibana.key
elasticsearch.ssl.certificateAuthorities: ["./config/ca.crt"]
server.host: 10.0.2.15

3. we use nssm to create and configure the service like this (we use a git-bash shell but you could substitute nssm.exe for ${NSSM_EXE}, and $INSTALL_DIR/kibana/bin/ with C:/windowsInstalls/7.10.0/kibana/bin, etc.);

    NSSM_EXE=`find /c/ProgramData/chocolatey/lib/NSSM/ -name nssm.exe*`
    ${NSSM_EXE} install kibana $INSTALL_DIR/kibana/bin/kibana.bat
    ${NSSM_EXE} set kibana AppDirectory $INSTALL_DIR/kibana
    ${NSSM_EXE} set kibana AppStdout $INSTALL_DIR/kibana/log/kibana.stdout
    ${NSSM_EXE} set kibana AppStderr $INSTALL_DIR/kibana/log/kibana.stderr
    ${NSSM_EXE} start kibana

4. elasticsearch.yml is pretty standard with similar security configuration. The only think notable is that elasticsearch listens on network.host: 0.0.0.0

Some screenshots of the kibana service;

I guess I don't have it setup to restart on failure? It hasn't been a problem in our test environment.

Nothing on the Dependencies tab.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app-services (Team:AppServices)

[tsullivan]

I've seen this same behavior happen when Windows itself was showing performance problems, and Kibana was not running as a background service.

I am going to close this issue. @LeeDr has shown evidence there is not a systemic issue behind running Kibana as a background service. However, if the system has general slowness and the dashboard size in pixels is above a certain threshold, the reporting job will fail at the moment Kibana has to store the screenshot data in memory.

The timeouts happen because sometimes, instead of crashing, Chromium just stops responding but sends no signal to the parent process that it can't complete the requested operation.

Closing as duplicate of #63073