# Feature table summarize Invalid DISPLAY variable

**URL:** <https://forum.qiime2.org/t/feature-table-summarize-invalid-display-variable/1227>\
**Category:** User Support\
**Tags:** matplotlib, summarize, feature-table\
**Created:** [September 13, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/feature-table-summarize-invalid-display-variable/1227 "2017-09-13T16:51:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mc92](https://forum.qiime2.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@mc92](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/mc92)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/feature-table-summarize-invalid-display-variable/1227/1 "2017-09-13T16:51:40Z")

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Hello,

I'm trying to analize the data from one microbiome study, following the Moving Pictures tutorials steps. Everything worked fine until I reached the "FeatureTable and FeatureData summaries" step, where the following error appears:

 ![imagen](https://forum-qiime2-org.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/1X/f5c306f5b4213e76c560d188f9ae2d1136a1899a.png)

I saw several posts here refering to an error of the matplotlib plugin, so following the instructions there I checked wether I have it installed or not. Apparently, the conda version I am running have this package installed, but when I check the plugins of qiime2 it doesn't appear.

 ![imagen](https://forum-qiime2-org.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/1X/118a8e95c812e5cd79348bf99631470430a4a579.png)  
Therefore, I suppose the error is related to the absence of this plugin. There's some way I could upload this plugin into qiime2 manually or something like that?

Thank you very much in advance,  
Marc

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**Author:** ![jairideout](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/jairideout/32/9_2.png) [@jairideout](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/jairideout)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 11:47pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/feature-table-summarize-invalid-display-variable/1227/3 "2017-09-13T23:47:01Z")

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Hi @mc92!

> [@mc92](#):
>
> I saw several posts here refering to an error of the matplotlib plugin, so following the instructions there I checked wether I have it installed or not. Apparently, the conda version I am running have this package installed, but when I check the plugins of qiime2 it doesn’t appear.
> 
> Therefore, I suppose the error is related to the absence of this plugin. There’s some way I could upload this plugin into qiime2 manually or something like that?

matplotlib isn't a QIIME 2 plugin so it won't show up in `qiime info`. matplotlib is a Python library for producing plots, and several QIIME 2 plugins use it internally for plotting. Since you're getting an `Invalid DISPLAY variable` error from matplotlib, that means it is installed! 🎉

There's a few posts on the forum describing how to fix this particular issue. Can you try the suggestions in this post?

> [@Error in qiime feature-table summarize](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/error-in-qiime-feature-table-summarize/308):
>
> Good morning, When trying to summarize a merged table from 4 denoised sequence variant data I got the following error: What is this DISPLAY variable? And how can I fix it? Thank you! (qiime2) ekg43@thompson:~/SCC/Dada$ qiime feature-table summarize --i-table table1234.qza --o-visualization table1234 Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/ekg43/miniconda3/envs/qiime2/bin/qiime", line 6, in \<module\> sys.exit(q2cli.\_\_main\_\_.qiime()) File "/home/ekg43/miniconda3/envs/qiime2/lib/p…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mc92](https://forum.qiime2.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@mc92](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/mc92)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/feature-table-summarize-invalid-display-variable/1227/5 "2017-09-14T16:35:25Z")

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Hi @jairideout,

I tried this command in the conda environment

```bash
echo "backend: Agg" > ~/.config/matplotlib/matplotlibrc 

```

and it worked! So I suppose the problem was not with Qiime but with the matplotlib configuration.

Thank you very much!

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**Author:** ![system](https://forum-qiime2-org.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/3X/2/1/21af5fe23cb6f4579467c66a9ed94e55274ca7bd.svg) [@system](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 10:35pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/feature-table-summarize-invalid-display-variable/1227/6 "2017-10-15T22:35:29Z")

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