overleaf/clsi =============== A web api for compiling LaTeX documents in the cloud The Common LaTeX Service Interface (CLSI) provides a RESTful interface to traditional LaTeX tools (or, more generally, any command line tool for composing marked-up documents into a display format such as PDF or HTML). The CLSI listens on the following ports by default: * TCP/3013 - the RESTful interface * TCP/3048 - reports load information * TCP/3049 - HTTP interface to control the CLSI service These defaults can be modified in `config/settings.defaults.js`. The provided `Dockerfile` builds a Docker image which has the Docker command line tools installed. The configuration in `docker-compose-config.yml` mounts the Docker socket, in order that the CLSI container can talk to the Docker host it is running in. This allows it to spin up `sibling containers` running an image with a TeX distribution installed to perform the actual compiles. The CLSI can be configured through the following environment variables: * `ALLOWED_COMPILE_GROUPS` - Space separated list of allowed compile groups * `ALLOWED_IMAGES` - Space separated list of allowed Docker TeX Live images * `CATCH_ERRORS` - Set to `true` to log uncaught exceptions * `COMPILE_GROUP_DOCKER_CONFIGS` - JSON string of Docker configs for compile groups * `COMPILES_HOST_DIR` - Working directory for LaTeX compiles * `COMPILE_SIZE_LIMIT` - Sets the body-parser [limit](https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser#limit) * `DOCKER_RUNNER` - Set to true to use sibling containers * `DOCKER_RUNTIME` - * `FILESTORE_DOMAIN_OVERRIDE` - The url for the filestore service e.g.`http://$FILESTORE_HOST:3009` * `FILESTORE_PARALLEL_FILE_DOWNLOADS` - Number of parallel file downloads * `LISTEN_ADDRESS` - The address for the RESTful service to listen on. Set to `0.0.0.0` to listen on all network interfaces * `PROCESS_LIFE_SPAN_LIMIT_MS` - Process life span limit in milliseconds * `SENTRY_DSN` - Sentry [Data Source Name](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/dsn-explainer/) * `SMOKE_TEST` - Whether to run smoke tests * `TEXLIVE_IMAGE` - The TeX Live Docker image to use for sibling containers, e.g. `gcr.io/overleaf-ops/texlive-full:2017.1` * `TEX_LIVE_IMAGE_NAME_OVERRIDE` - The name of the registry for the Docker image e.g. `gcr.io/overleaf-ops` * `TEXLIVE_IMAGE_USER` - When using sibling containers, the user to run as in the TeX Live image. Defaults to `tex` * `TEXLIVE_OPENOUT_ANY` - Sets the `openout_any` environment variable for TeX Live (see the `\openout` primitive [documentation](http://tug.org/texinfohtml/web2c.html#tex-invocation)) Further environment variables configure the [metrics module](https://github.com/overleaf/metrics-module) Installation ------------ The CLSI can be installed and set up as part of the entire [Overleaf stack](https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf) (complete with front end editor and document storage), or it can be run as a standalone service. To run is as a standalone service, first checkout this repository: ```shell git clone git@github.com:overleaf/overleaf.git ``` Then build the Docker image: ```shell docker build . -t overleaf/clsi -f services/clsi/Dockerfile ``` Then pull the TeX Live image: ```shell docker pull texlive/texlive ``` Then start the Docker container: ```shell docker run --rm \ -p 127.0.0.1:3013:3013 \ -e LISTEN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0 \ -e DOCKER_RUNNER=true \ -e TEXLIVE_IMAGE=texlive/texlive \ -e TEXLIVE_IMAGE_USER=root \ -e COMPILES_HOST_DIR="$PWD/compiles" \ -v "$PWD/compiles:/overleaf/services/clsi/compiles" \ -v "$PWD/cache:/overleaf/services/clsi/cache" \ -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \ --name clsi \ overleaf/clsi ``` Note: if you're running the CLSI in macOS you may need to use `-v /var/run/docker.sock.raw:/var/run/docker.sock` instead. The CLSI should then be running at Important note for Linux users ============================== The Node application runs as user `node` in the CLSI, which has uid `1000`. As a consequence of this, the `compiles` folder gets created on your host with `uid` and `gid` set to `1000`. ```shell ls -lnd compiles ``` > `drwxr-xr-x 2 1000 1000 4096 Mar 19 12:41 compiles` If there is a user/group on your host which also happens to have `uid` / `gid` `1000` then that user/group will have ownership of the compiles folder on your host. LaTeX runs in the sibling containers as the user specified in the `TEXLIVE_IMAGE_USER` environment variable. In the example above this is set to `root`, which has uid `0`. This creates a problem with the above permissions, as the root user does not have permission to write to subfolders of `compiles`. A quick fix is to give the `root` group ownership and read write permissions to `compiles`, with `setgid` set so that new subfolders also inherit this ownership: ```shell sudo chown -R 1000:root compiles sudo chmod -R g+w compiles sudo chmod g+s compiles ``` Another solution is to create a `overleaf` group and add both `root` and the user with `uid` `1000` to it. If the host does not have a user with that `uid`, you will need to create one first. ```shell sudo useradd --uid 1000 host-node-user # If required sudo groupadd overleaf sudo usermod -a -G overleaf root sudo usermod -a -G overleaf $(id -nu 1000) sudo chown -R 1000:overleaf compiles sudo chmod -R g+w compiles sudo chmod g+s compiles ``` This is a facet of the way docker works on Linux. See this [upstream issue](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/7198) API --- The CLSI is based on a JSON API. #### Example Request (Note that valid JSON should not contain any comments like the example below). POST /project//compile ```json5 { "compile": { "options": { // Which compiler to use. Can be latex, pdflatex, xelatex or lualatex "compiler": "lualatex", // How many seconds to wait before killing the process. Default is 60. "timeout": 40 }, // The main file to run LaTeX on "rootResourcePath": "main.tex", // An array of files to include in the compilation. May have either the content // passed directly, or a URL where it can be downloaded. "resources": [ { "path": "main.tex", "content": "\\documentclass{article}\n\\begin{document}\nHello World\n\\end{document}" } // ,{ // "path": "image.png", // "url": "www.example.com/image.png", // "modified": 123456789 // Unix time since epoch // } ] } } ``` With `curl`, if you place the above JSON in a file called `data.json`, the request would look like this: ```shell curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d @data.json http://localhost:3013/project//compile ``` You can specify any project-id in the URL, and the files and LaTeX environment will be persisted between requests. URLs will be downloaded and cached until provided with a more recent modified date. #### Example Response ```json { "compile": { "status": "success", "outputFiles": [{ "type": "pdf", "url": "http://localhost:3013/project//output/output.pdf" }, { "type": "log", "url": "http://localhost:3013/project//output/output.log" }] } } ``` License ------- The code in this repository is released under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, version 3. A copy can be found in the `LICENSE` file. Copyright (c) Overleaf, 2014-2021.