Generating a PNG with matplotlib when DISPLAY is undefined

Question

I am trying to use networkx with Python. When I run this program it get this error. Is there anything missing?

#!/usr/bin/env python

import networkx as nx
i         


        

Answer 1

One other thing to check is whether your current user is authorised to connect to the X display. In my case, root was not allowed to do that and matplotlib was complaining with the same error.

user@debian:~$ xauth list         
debian/unix:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  ae921efd0026c6fc9d62a8963acdcca0
root@debian:~# xauth add debian/unix:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 ae921efd0026c6fc9d62a8963acdcca0
root@debian:~# xterm

source: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/494 https://debian-administration.org/article/494/Getting_X11_forwarding_through_ssh_working_after_running_su

Answer 2

I got the error while using matplotlib through Spark. matplotlib.use('Agg') doesn't work for me. In the end, the following code works for me. More here

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt.
plt.switch_backend('agg')

Answer 3

What system are you on? It looks like you have a system with X11, but the DISPLAY environment variable was not properly set. Try executing the following command and then rerunning your program:

export DISPLAY=localhost:0

Answer 4

To make sure your code is portable across Windows, Linux and OSX and for systems with and without displays, I would suggest following snippet:

import matplotlib
import os
# must be before importing matplotlib.pyplot or pylab!
if os.name == 'posix' and "DISPLAY" not in os.environ:
    matplotlib.use('Agg')

# now import other things from matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Credit: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45756291/207661

Answer 5

For Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.use('Agg')
from matplotlib.backends.backend_pdf import PdfPages

And then to print to file:

#PDF build and save
    def multi_page(filename, figs=None, dpi=200):
        pp = PdfPages(filename)
        if figs is None:
            figs = [mpl.pyplot.figure(n) for n in mpl.pyplot.get_fignums()]
        for fig in figs:
            fig.savefig(pp, format='pdf', bbox_inches='tight', fig_size=(10, 8))
        pp.close()

and to create the PDF:

multi_page(report_name)

Answer 6

The main problem is that (on your system) matplotlib chooses an x-using backend by default. I just had the same problem on one of my servers. The solution for me was to add the following code in a place that gets read before any other pylab/matplotlib/pyplot import:

import matplotlib
# Force matplotlib to not use any Xwindows backend.
matplotlib.use('Agg')

The alternative is to set it in your .matplotlibrc