How to run OpenAI Gym .render() over a server

Question

I am running a python 2.7 script on a p2.xlarge AWS server through Jupyter (Ubuntu 14.04). I would like to be able to render my simulations.

Minimal working example<

Answer 1

I managed to run and render openai/gym (even with mujoco) remotely on a headless server.

# Install and configure X window with virtual screen
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev
# Configure the nvidia-x
sudo nvidia-xconfig -a --use-display-device=None --virtual=1280x1024
# Run the virtual screen in the background (:0)
sudo /usr/bin/X :0 &
# We only need to setup the virtual screen once

# Run the program with vitural screen
DISPLAY=:0 

# If you dont want to type `DISPLAY=:0` everytime
export DISPLAY=:0

Usage:

DISPLAY=:0 ipython2

Example:

import gym
env = gym.make('Ant-v1')
arr = env.render(mode='rgb_array')
print(arr.shape)
# plot or save wherever you want
# plt.imshow(arr) or scipy.misc.imsave('sample.png', arr)