Access arcpy on Linux

Question

Hello, I have installed ArcGIS Server 10.6.1 on Linux and followed the instruction here to create a conda environment named arcgis with Python 3.6. Using the shell, I can activate the conda env and import arcpy successfully. However, the conda env does not work with any IDE (e.g., PyCharm, VS Code) or Jupyter Notebook. See below the message I got when trying to import arcpy in Jupyter Notebook. Any help will be greatly appreciated! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- error Traceback (most recent call last) in () ----> 1 import arcpy /opt/anaconda/envs/arcgis/lib/python3.6/site-packages/arcpy/__init__.py in () 68 raise ImportError("arcpy needs to run within an active ArcGIS Conda environment") 69 else:---> 70 import _initagsenv 71 72 from arcpy.geoprocessing import gp error: WSLib: failed initializing arcpy. Check if environment was activated correctly. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- arcpy only works in Console

VidmasKondratas · Answer

I use VS Code to debug arcpy on Linux. It can be finicky and I sometimes get the "Xvfb: failed initializing arcpy. Check if environment was activated correctly." error when importing arcpy. The way I use VS Code to debug and run scripts is basically this:

1) I create Python unit tests to step into the arcpy script. I either run proper unit test or just step into and run main() if I want to run the entire script.

2)  In VS Code I open an integrated bash terminal and copy and paste the following lines of bash code into it

#!/bin/bash

export PATH="$PATH:/home/arcgis/anaconda3/bin"
export ARCGISHOME=/opt/esri/arcgis/server
source activate arcpy3

3) Then in VS Code I make sure the Python interpreter from my arcpy3 conda environment is selected as the Python interpreter.

4) I open the Python unit test file and in VS Code Debug I run the "Python: Current File (Integrated Terminal)" debug configuration to step into a breakpoint.

rkraujutis_hb · Answer

It's easy to reproduce and it's not related with VS Code. Steps to reproduce: - run `docker run -it --rm continuumio/anaconda3 bash` - create new environment by executing: ```bash conda create -n arcgis -c esri python=3.7 anaconda arcgis-server-py3 ``` - activate environment by executing: ```bash conda activate arcgis ``` - start `python3`: ```bash python3 ``` - try import arcpy: ```python import arcpy ``` Result is: ``` Python 3.7.16 (default, Jan 17 2023, 22:20:44) [GCC 11.2.0] :: Anaconda, Inc. on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import arcpy Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in File "/opt/conda/envs/arcgis/lib/python3.7/site-packages/arcpy/__init__.py", line 75, in import _initagsenv _initagsenv.error: Xvfb: failed initializing arcpy. Check if environment was activated correctly. ```

ShaunWalbridge · Answer

One more note: I tried a little more with Visual Studio Code, and it looks like at some point, they will fix this upstream by activating the environment prior to using it with Conda environments. Currently, they just call python.exe without activation, they have a few issues open on their repository about this, such as Debugger not activating Anaconda environments · Issue #2067 · Microsoft/vscode-python · GitHub .

If you want to try and make this work in Visual Studio Code today without any additional setup of environment variables, you could also set them up manually with VScode (see Configuring Python Environments in Visual Studio Code ) , but it's probably easiest to run code from within the active environment.