Setting up headless display

[Sunil7545]

Hello everyone,
I am using the following lines of code to store the rendered image in the local disk without displaying it.

grid = pv.StructuredGrid(y1, x1, 5*ilm_rpe_2mm)
plotter = pv.Plotter(off_screen=True)
vertices_point = grid.points
plotter.add_mesh(grid, scalars=vertices_point[:, 2], opacity=0.95, clim=[0.2 * 5, 0.4 * 5], cmap='jet')
       
for idx in range(x_radials.shape[0]):
        points = np.column_stack((x_radials[idx], y_radials[idx], 5 * z_radials[idx]))
        spline = pv.Spline(points)
        plotter.add_points(spline)

plotter.set_background([1, 1, 1])
plotter.remove_scalar_bar()
plotter.set_scale(1.0, 1.0, 3.0, False)
plotter.enable_anti_aliasing()
plotter.show()
plotter.screenshot(name, transparent_background=False)

This code is working perfectly with windows 10. But when I am running it on a Linux system, I am getting the following error:

"ERROR:root:bad X server connection. DISPLAY=                                                                                                                                           
Aborted"

Can you please help me with this issue?
I am not able fix it.

Thank You
Sunil

[github-actions]

Hi and welcome! Thanks for posting your first issue in the PyVista project! Someone from @pyvista/developers will chime in before too long. If your question is support related, it may be automatically transferred to https://github.com/pyvista/pyvista-support

[banesullivan]

Are you running in a VM with a headless display?

Look through https://docs.pyvista.org/getting-started/installation.html for insight

You may just need to sudo apt install one of libgl1-mesa-glx or libgl1-mesa-dev

[banesullivan]

If it is a headless environment, you may need to set up the display: sudo apt install xvfb

#!/bin/bash
set -x
export DISPLAY=:99.0
export PYVISTA_OFF_SCREEN=true
which Xvfb
Xvfb :99 -screen 0 1024x768x24 > /dev/null 2>&1 &
sleep 3
set +x
exec "$@"

[Sunil7545]

Hi Bane, Thank you very much for quick reply, Yeah , it is running on a VM. I will check it Regards Sunil

…

On Wed, 24 Jun 2020 19:06 Bane Sullivan, ***@***.***> wrote: Are you running in a VM with a headless display? Look through https://docs.pyvista.org/getting-started/installation.html for insight You may just need to sudo apt install one of libgl1-mesa-glx or libgl1-mesa-dev — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://github.com/pyvista/pyvista/issues/815#issuecomment-648946614>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEB5O7SM2FQUGME32FI2GITRYIW7VANCNFSM4OG3EXWQ> .

[Sunil7545]

Hi Bane,

I added the "start" file in the same repository like you have given the example of PVGeo (attached the screenshot) also installed the above mentioned libraries.
But still getting the same error.

Do I need to reference this file in my main code or somewhere?
Sorry for my naive question, I am pretty new to virtual machines and Linux systems.

Please take a look at the attached image

Thank you in advance.
Sunil

[akaszynski]

Hello @Sunil7545,

You're going to want to create a start_xvfb.sh bash file with @banesullivan's script and give it executable permissions with chmod +x start_xvfb.sh. Then run ./start_xvfb.sh, which will start your headless display in the background. I think the issue is you've yet to actually start the script. You can tell it's running with pgrep Xvfb, which will return a process id if it's actually running.

[Sunil7545]

Hi Alex,
Thank you again for your suggestion, I followed the procedure, you mentioned, but still getting similar error.
I m using pyvista==0.25.3. It seems Xvfb working fine.

Please take a look at the attached picture,

Regards
Sunil

[banesullivan]

Try running sleep 30 (if this is automated or just wait a few minutes if you're typing in the commands) to give Xvfb a chance to boot up. I've found that it can take Xvfb a few minutes to boot with some configurations - the other day it took a Docker container I had at least 2 minutes

Otherwise, make sure you're not missing anything from https://docs.pyvista.org/getting-started/installation.html#running-on-remote-servers

[chen112p]

hello im still having some issue with this topic.
I am running pyvista on a headless centos machine. All I am trying to do is to load existing vtk files and put them together as a gif animation.
I have installed Xvfb

and mesa-libGL. Also, created a shell script to config Xvfb

But still when running the python script, it tells me 'could not find a decent visual'

I have checked that there is a xvfb process running in the background:

Can you tell what i missed and where i did wrong here?

Thanks!

Junting