Bug: Cannot set up chromium user profile through novnc because `DISPLAY` does not exist on `docker compose run --rm archivebox``

Author: nanamiyuuriCreated Sep 4, 2026Updated Sep 5, 2026

Provide a screenshot and describe the bug

I was trying to do https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Chromium-Install#setting-up-a-chromium-user-profile I edited docker-compose.yml:

yaml

services:
    archivebox:
        image: ${ARCHIVEBOX_IMAGE:-archivebox/archivebox:dev}
        restart: unless-stopped
        ports:
            - "${ARCHIVEBOX_PORT:-8000}:8000"
        volumes:
            - ./data:/data
            # Override abx-dl's nested VOLUME so profiles persist across containers.
            - ./data/personas:/data/personas
            # Let one-off `docker compose run` commands reuse the server's supervisor.
            - tmp:/tmp/archivebox
        pids_limit: 2048                       # avoids low systemd task caps with Chrome and parallel extractors
        environment:
            - DISPLAY=novnc:0.0
        shm_size: "1gb"                         # Chrome runs more efficiently when using a reasonably sized shared memory pool
    novnc:
        image: theasp/novnc:latest
        profiles:
            - novnc
        environment:
            - DISPLAY_WIDTH=1920
            - DISPLAY_HEIGHT=1080
            - RUN_XTERM=no
        ports:
            - 127.0.0.1:8080:8080
volumes:
    tmp:

and ran docker compose up -d novnc docker compose run --rm archivebox persona create personal then the next command showed errors (by the way my chromium was /opt/archivebox/lib/playwright/cache/chromium-1234/chrome-linux64/chrome, not /data/lib/env/bin/chromium as written in the doc)

bash

~/archivebox$ docker compose run --rm archivebox /opt/archivebox/lib/playwright/cache/chromium-1234/chrome-linux64/chrome --user-data-dir=/data/personas/personal/chrome_profile --profile-directory=Default --disable-gpu --disable-features=dbus --disable-dev-shm-usage --start-maximized --no-sandbox --disable-setuid-sandbox --no-zygote --disable-sync --no-first-run
Container archivebox-archivebox-run-6797c295fd3b Creating
Container archivebox-archivebox-run-6797c295fd3b Created
[7:7:0904/170637.920022:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/x11/ozone_platform_x11.cc:257] Missing X server or $DISPLAY
[7:420:0904/170637.918421:ERROR:dbus/bus.cc:405] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
[7:7:0904/170637.925310:ERROR:ui/aura/env.cc:246] The platform failed to initialize.  Exiting.

This is because the environment variable DISPLAY does not exist while docker compose run --rm archivebox

bash

~/archivebox$ docker compose run --rm archivebox sh -c '
  if [ -z "${DISPLAY+x}" ]; then
    echo "DISPLAY is not set"
  else
    echo "DISPLAY is set to: $DISPLAY"
  fi
'
Container archivebox-archivebox-run-2e4397da9cb6 Creating
Container archivebox-archivebox-run-2e4397da9cb6 Created
DISPLAY is not set

There is a workaround for this issue: DISPLAY does exist after docker compose up -d archivebox --wait so just run chromium after that: e.g.

bash

docker compose up -d archivebox --wait
docker exec -it <container_id> bash
/opt/archivebox/lib/playwright/cache/chromium-1234/chrome-linux64/chrome --user-data-dir=/data/personas/personal/chrome_profile --profile-directory=Default --disable-gpu --disable-features=dbus --disable-dev-shm-usage --start-maximized --no-sandbox --disable-setuid-sandbox --no-zygote --disable-sync --no-first-run

bash

# check if novnc x11 $DISPLAY is available
export DISPLAY="${DISPLAY:-"novnc:0.0"}"
if ! xdpyinfo > /dev/null 2>&1; then
    # cant connect to x11 display, unset it so that chrome doesn't try to connect to it and hang indefinitely
    unset DISPLAY
fi

To see what happened here I ran below command:

bash

~/archivebox$ docker compose run --rm archivebox sh -c 'xdpyinfo -display novnc:0.0'
Container archivebox-archivebox-run-c502753a3521 Creating
Container archivebox-archivebox-run-c502753a3521 Created
sh: 1: xdpyinfo: not found

Steps to reproduce

markdown

wrote above

Logs or errors

bash

ArchiveBox Version

bash

0.9.35rc381 (Docker compose on WSL2)

How did you install the version of ArchiveBox you are using?

Docker (or Podman/LXC/K8s/TrueNAS/Proxmox/etc)

What operating system are you running on?

Windows (including WSL, WSL2, Docker Desktop on Windows)

What type of drive are you using to store your ArchiveBox data?

some of data/ is on a local SSD or NVMe drive
some of data/ is on a spinning hard drive or external USB drive
some of data/ is on a network mount (e.g. NFS/SMB/Ceph/GlusterFS/etc.)
some of data/ is on a FUSE mount (e.g. SSHFS/RClone/S3/B2/Google Drive/Dropbox/etc.)

Docker Compose Configuration

bash

ArchiveBox Configuration

bash

Source: ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox

View original on GitHub View discussion on GitHub