electron: Node IPC not working after spawning Electron with empty env

I’m unable to make a simple IPC communication between node and spawned electron process working on linux ubuntu. It works fine on Windows.

node.js code

var electron = require('electron-prebuilt')
var spawn = require('child_process').spawn

var child = spawn(electron, ['electron-script.js'], {
  stdio: ['ipc']
})

child.on('message', function (m) {
  console.log('Yes it works!')
})

electron script

process.send('I am ok')
process.exit(0);

On windows I get back Yes it works! to console. There seems to be no communication happening and nothing is printed on ubuntu. Thank you for the help.

Electron version: ~ 1.3.1
Operating system: Ubuntu

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 8 years ago
Reactions: 1
Comments: 16 (7 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

This doesn’t seem to happen if you leave DISPLAY set.

    env: { 'DISPLAY': process.env.DISPLAY },

That seems to be well documented in docs/tutorial/testing-on-headless-ci.md.

Being based on Chromium, Electron requires a display driver to function. If Chromium can’t find a display driver, Electron will simply fail to launch

karolba on Oct 8, 2016

With only the information that is currently in the issue, we don’t have enough information to take action

hmm i’m not sure that is true, i’ve provided an example that shows the bug, it is short to try it, and it was even confirmed by another member in the electron team.

however i will try electron v2 and see if the bug is still there

bjrmatos on May 18, 2018

We haven’t gotten a response to our questions in the comment above. With only the information that is currently in the issue, we don’t have enough information to take action. In this event, i’m going to go ahead and close this but can reopen should you follow up with more info!

codebytere on May 18, 2018

@zcbenz shouldn’t the label be linux instead of osx ?

bjrmatos on Sep 3, 2016