Unable to display plot using the REPL. GKS errors

DomCaron · August 2, 2018, 3:18pm

I recently changed my OS to Ubuntu on my laptop and reinstalled Julia. When trying to plot something, I have the following messages:

julia> using Plots

julia> plot(randn(20))
/home/dcaron/.julia/v0.6/GR/src/../deps/gr/bin/gksqt: error while loading shared libraries: libQt5Widgets.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
connect: Connection refused
GKS: can't connect to GKS socket application
Did you start 'gksqt'?

GKS: Open failed in routine OPEN_WS
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSOP or WSAC in routine ACTIVATE_WS
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine FILLAREA
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine FILLAREA
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine TEXT
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSAC or SGOP in routine POLYLINE

On Atom, i am able to display plots, so i am guessing it is a problem related with the package GR.

jheinen · August 2, 2018, 3:30pm

It seems that the Qt5 run-time is missing on your laptop.

sudo apt-get install qt5-default

should fix the problem.

jheinen · August 2, 2018, 3:32pm

If this doesn’t help, ensure that the GR run-time is up-to-date:

ENV["GRDIR"] = ""
Pkg.build("GR")

DomCaron · August 2, 2018, 6:20pm

It worked, thanks a lot!

spk57 · January 11, 2019, 12:50pm

Thanks for posting. I had same error with new Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS distro / Julia 1.0.3. installing qt5-default resolved issue.

Freed-Wu · April 26, 2020, 7:33am

I met this error. but i use gentoo not debian so i cannot run apt install. how can i do to solve this problem?

Tamas_Papp · April 26, 2020, 7:44am

Use whatever mechanism Gentoo prefers for installing software (I think it is called emerge, but I never used Gentoo much).

Freed-Wu · April 26, 2020, 10:08am

error while loading shared libraries: libQtGui.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

i have installed qtgui-5.13.2 in my gentoo. but it still display this error… i wanna try to whether updating qtgui can solve this error…

Freed-Wu · April 26, 2020, 3:43pm

i have update qtgui to 5.14.1-r4. it still return this error.

Ralph_Smith · April 26, 2020, 4:05pm

The GR backend is trying to fall back to Qt4, but you have installed Qt5. Did you do the above-mentioned rebuild of GR.jl after the latest install of Qt5?

Freed-Wu · April 27, 2020, 5:24am

] build GR

i have builded GR. is it wrong? what should i do?

Freed-Wu · April 27, 2020, 5:32am

let me try to make sciapp/gr…

Freed-Wu · April 27, 2020, 5:48am

although it has an error qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 146 (Unknown), sequence: 201, resource id: 0, major code: 139 (Unknown), minor code: 20 , but the figure appears successful! thanks!

Samuel_Ainsworth · July 23, 2020, 12:00am

Is there any workaround for those of us who need to work on machines that we don’t have sudo access to?

Also why does GR require Qt5? I’m running completely headless…

jheinen · July 23, 2020, 1:29am

On headless systems, pls set the environment GKS_WSTYPE to nul or 100.

Samuel_Ainsworth · July 23, 2020, 1:43am

I tried both of these settings but they give me an error:

ERROR: LoadError: SystemError: opening file "/tmp/jl_CdHheQ.png": No such file or directory
Stacktrace:
 [1] systemerror(::String, ::Int32; extrainfo::Nothing) at ./error.jl:168
 [2] #systemerror#50 at ./error.jl:167 [inlined]
 [3] systemerror at ./error.jl:167 [inlined]
 [4] open(::String; read::Nothing, write::Nothing, create::Nothing, truncate::Nothing, append::Nothing) at ./iostream.jl:254
 [5] open at ./iostream.jl:246 [inlined]
 [6] open(::Base.var"#279#280"{String}, ::String; kwargs::Base.Iterators.Pairs{Union{},Union{},Tuple{},NamedTuple{(),Tuple{}}}) at ./io.jl:296
 [7] open at ./io.jl:296 [inlined]
 [8] read at ./io.jl:381 [inlined]
 [9] _show(::IOStream, ::MIME{Symbol("image/png")}, ::Plots.Plot{Plots.GRBackend}) at /home/skainswo/.julia/packages/Plots/VA7Vx/src/backends/gr.jl:1970
 [10] show at /home/skainswo/.julia/packages/Plots/VA7Vx/src/output.jl:215 [inlined]
 [11] png(::Plots.Plot{Plots.GRBackend}, ::String) at /home/skainswo/.julia/packages/Plots/VA7Vx/src/output.jl:7
 [12] frame(::Plots.Animation, ::Plots.Plot{Plots.GRBackend}) at /home/skainswo/.julia/packages/Plots/VA7Vx/src/animation.jl:20
 [13] frame(::Plots.Animation) at /home/skainswo/.julia/packages/Plots/VA7Vx/src/animation.jl:18
 [14] top-level scope at /home/skainswo/dev/research/julia/odecontrol/diffdrive/train.jl:89
 [15] include(::Module, ::String) at ./Base.jl:377
 [16] exec_options(::Base.JLOptions) at ./client.jl:288
 [17] _start() at ./client.jl:484
in expression starting at /home/skainswo/dev/research/julia/odecontrol/diffdrive/train.jl:48

Also, is there documentation for this somewhere?

EDIT: Tried a value of 140 as suggested in https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Plots.jl/issues/1612 and that worked Magic numbers galore!

jheinen · July 23, 2020, 5:49am

Sorry - my fault. I didn’t realize that you are using Plots. That’s an example for headless systems:

ENV["GKSwstype"] = "nul"
using Plots
plot(rand(10))
savefig("foo.png")

affans · July 23, 2020, 7:16pm

I am also getting these errors:

julia> plot(rand(10))
/home/affans/.julia/packages/GR/Atztx/src/../deps/gr/bin/gksqt: error while loading shared libraries: libQt5Widgets.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
connect: Connection refused
GKS: can't connect to GKS socket application

GKS: Open failed in routine OPEN_WS
GKS: GKS not in proper state. GKS must be either in the state WSOP or WSAC in routine ACTIVATE_WS

Setting ENV["GKSwstype"] = "nul" or ENV["GKSwstype"] = "140" works but plot(rand(10)) dosn’t really do anything (I am using an X-server to pop up the image from my server to local). So anyway I can get this to work on a server (without sudo access, so can’t install Qt5Widgets.so.5) and with x-forwarding?

Samuel_Ainsworth · July 25, 2020, 3:04am

ENV[“GKSwstype”] = “nul”

This did the trick for me! Thanks!

txrvl · October 22, 2020, 5:19pm

For gentoo users
euse -p sci-visualization/gr -E cairo
emerge --ask --verbose sci-visualization/gr
source /etc/profile