Cannot execute Puppeteer in IIS

Question

I have an ASP.NET Core 8.0 Web API created with C# that provides an endpoint to create PDFs from HTML markup. I use PuppeteerSharp to create the PDF, and it worked fine locally, but it does not work when deployed to IIS on a Windows Server machine.

To investigate this issue further, I have extracted the PDF creation code into a standalone application:

using PuppeteerSharp;
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace MSS.PdfExport
{
    public class Parameters
    {
        public string Html { get; set; }

        public string Base64 { get; set; }

        public Parameters()
        {
            Html = string.Empty;
            Base64 = string.Empty;
        }
    }

    internal class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(@"C:\Temp\Test\Log.txt", false, Encoding.UTF8)
            {
                AutoFlush = true
            };

            // Read parsed HTML code.
            var stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

            while (true)
            {
                var ch = Convert.ToChar(Console.Read());
                stringBuilder.Append(ch);

                if (ch == '\n')
                {
                    break;
                }
            }

            var sbText = stringBuilder.ToString();

            streamWriter.WriteLine($"{nameof(stringBuilder)} = {stringBuilder}");
            streamWriter.WriteLine();
            streamWriter.WriteLine();
            streamWriter.WriteLine();

            // Get HTML code.
            var html = WebUtility.UrlDecode(sbText);

            streamWriter.WriteLine($"{nameof(html)} = {html}");
            streamWriter.WriteLine();
            streamWriter.WriteLine();
            streamWriter.WriteLine();

            // Execute generator.
            try
            {
                var test = new Parameters()
                {
                    Html = html
                };

                ExportPdf(test).Wait();

                Console.WriteLine(test.Base64);

                File.WriteAllText(@"C:\Temp\Test\output.txt", test.Base64);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                streamWriter.WriteLine();
                streamWriter.WriteLine();
                streamWriter.WriteLine();

                streamWriter.WriteLine($"{nameof(ex)} = {ex}");
            }
            finally
            {
                streamWriter.Close();
            }
        }

        private static async Task ExportPdf(Parameters parameters)
        {
            var browserFetcher = new BrowserFetcher();
            await browserFetcher.DownloadAsync();

            var browser = await Puppeteer.LaunchAsync(new LaunchOptions
            {
                Headless = true,
                Args = ["--no-sandbox", "--disable-setuid-sandbox"]
            });

            using (var page = await browser.NewPageAsync())
            {
                await page.SetContentAsync(parameters.Html);

                var data = await page.PdfDataAsync(new PdfOptions
                {
                    PrintBackground = true
                });

                parameters.Base64 = Convert.ToBase64String(data);
            }

            await browser.CloseAsync();
        }
    }
}

The application reads a URL-encoded HTML input stream, converts it to HTML, and finally uses Puppeteer to open a headless Chromium to convert the HTML into PDF and write the results in console and write into a file.

If I save the URL-encoded HTML text into a text file and execute my application via Windows command line, it works perfectly fine!

MSS.PdfExport.exe < "C:\Temp\Test\New Text Document.txt"

However, when I call the application from my API with this code:

// Decode the HTML code.
var html = WebUtility.UrlDecode(model.Html);

_logger.LogInformation($"{this}.Index > Execute generation.");

var htmlBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(model.Html);
var utf8Html = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(htmlBytes);

_logger.LogInformation($"{this}.Index > {nameof(utf8Html)} = {utf8Html}");
_logger.LogInformation($"{this}.Index > {nameof(utf8Html.Length)} = {utf8Html.Length}");

var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.CreateNoWindow = false;
startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
startInfo.FileName = @"C:\Temp\PdfExport\MSS.PdfExport.exe";
startInfo.WorkingDirectory = @"C:\Temp\PdfExport\";
startInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
startInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
startInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;

var output = string.Empty;

try
{
    using (var process = Process.Start(startInfo))
    {
        _logger.LogInformation($"{this}.Index > Process started. {nameof(startInfo)} = [{startInfo}]");

        if (process is not null)
        {
            using (var writer = process.StandardInput)
            {
                if (writer.BaseStream.CanWrite)
                {
                    writer.WriteLine(utf8Html);
                }
            }

            var reader = process.StandardOutput;
            output = reader.ReadToEnd();

            _logger.LogInformation($"{this}.Index > {nameof(output)} = \"{output}\"");

            process.WaitForExit();
        }
    }
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
    _logger.LogInformation($"{this}.Index > {nameof(exception)} = {exception}");
}

Puppeteer does not work and I get the following exception:

System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. (Failed to launch browser!

[112204:131028:1023/144647.887:ERROR:base\win\message_window.cc:124] Failed to register the window class for a message-only window: The requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context. (0x36B7))

PuppeteerSharp.ProcessException: Failed to launch browser! [112204:131028:1023/144647.887:ERROR:base\win\message_window.cc:124] Failed to register the window class for a message-only window: The requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context. (0x36B7)

at PuppeteerSharp.States.ProcessStartingState.StartCoreAsync(LauncherBase p) in /home/runner/work/puppeteer-sharp/puppeteer-sharp/lib/PuppeteerSharp/States/ProcessStartingState.cs:line 83
at PuppeteerSharp.States.ProcessStartingState.StartCoreAsync(LauncherBase p) in /home/runner/work/puppeteer-sharp/puppeteer-sharp/lib/PuppeteerSharp/States/ProcessStartingState.cs:line 89
at PuppeteerSharp.Launcher.LaunchAsync(LaunchOptions options) in /home/runner/work/puppeteer-sharp/puppeteer-sharp/lib/PuppeteerSharp/Launcher.cs:line 77
at PuppeteerSharp.Launcher.LaunchAsync(LaunchOptions options) in /home/runner/work/puppeteer-sharp/puppeteer-sharp/lib/PuppeteerSharp/Launcher.cs:line 110
at MSS.PdfExport.Program.ExportPdf(Parameters parameters) in [redacted]\MSS.PdfExport\Program.cs:line 94
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.ThrowIfExceptional(Boolean includeTaskCanceledExceptions)
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Wait(Int32 millisecondsTimeout, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Wait()
at MSS.PdfExport.Program.Main(String[] args) in [redacted]\MSS.PdfExport\Program.cs:line 69