How to run OpenAI Gym .render() over a server

Question

I am running a python 2.7 script on a p2.xlarge AWS server through Jupyter (Ubuntu 14.04). I would like to be able to render my simulations.

Minimal working example<

Answer 1

I avoided the issues with using matplotlib by simply using PIL, Python Image Library:

import gym, PIL
env = gym.make('SpaceInvaders-v0')
array = env.reset()
PIL.Image.fromarray(env.render(mode='rgb_array'))

I found that I didn't need to set the XV frame buffer.