qt.qpa.plugin error after installation (no root privileges)

[batuhanerkat]

Describe the issue:

I always used suite2p on a local computer. Recently I am trying to switch to a HPC. I installed suite2p regularly, by cloning from the git repository, on a HPC cluster through a virtual machine (noVNC). When I try to run suite2p I receive the qt error:

qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl, wayland-xcomposite-glx, webgl, xcb.

I tried reinstalling and trying different suite2p versions by git checkout, still received the same error. Right now, I have the same anaconda and suite2p versions, and pip package versions as in our local computer (numpy version has an incompatibility at the latest version). As I am on a HPC, I do not have root privileges to follow the solution you suggested in this link on the installation page: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1406379/qt5-install-problem-ubuntustudio-22-04/1406503#1406503

I added these packages to conda environment trying to overcome this issue but it did not resolve:
conda install conda-forge::pyqt5.sip
conda install conda-forge::libxcb

Would it be possible to overcome this problem by using a container such as Docker or Singularity? Do you have any suggestions that I can try without using containers?

Provide environment info:

(suite2p) [obe1@hal0073 ~]$ conda info
sui
active environment : suite2p
active env location : /home/obe1/anaconda3/envs/suite2p
shell level : 2
user config file : /home/obe1/.condarc
populated config files :
conda version : 4.12.0
conda-build version : 3.21.4
python version : 3.8.8.final.0
virtual packages : __linux=3.10.0=0
__glibc=2.17=0
__unix=0=0
__archspec=1=x86_64
base environment : /home/obe1/anaconda3 (writable)
conda av data dir : /home/obe1/anaconda3/etc/conda
conda av metadata url : None
channel URLs : https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/linux-64
https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/linux-64
https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
package cache : /home/obe1/anaconda3/pkgs
/home/obe1/.conda/pkgs
envs directories : /home/obe1/anaconda3/envs
/home/obe1/.conda/envs
platform : linux-64
user-agent : conda/4.12.0 requests/2.25.1 CPython/3.8.8 Linux/3.10.0-1160.105.1.el7.x86_64 centos/7.9.2009 glibc/2.17
UID:GID : 178007:178007
netrc file : None
offline mode : False

[edoardogiacomello]

Hello, I am facing the same issue due to not having sudo access to install Qt5.

I tried to install it using conda install anaconda::pyqt=5.15.10 and qmake -v points to the conda env folder with version 5.15.2, however the error from suite2p remains the same.

I think it still tries to use Qt6 because it also output this:
qt.qpa.plugin: From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin.

Did you manage to find a workaround for this?

[batuhanerkat]

Hi, we realized this is a GUI related issue. Our HPC doesn't support it, so we tried the latest no-GUI version at the time, and it worked. Hope it helps.