TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object

[wennycooper]

• Current repo: run git fetch && git status -uno to check and git pull to update repo
• Common dataset: coco128.yaml
• Common environment: Docker image

🐛 Bug

A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

To Reproduce (REQUIRED)

Input:

# python train.py --img 640 --batch 16 --epochs 5 --data coco128.yaml --weights yolov5s.pt

Output:

Downloading https://ultralytics.com/assets/Arial.ttf to Arial.ttf...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/workspace/folder/yolov5/utils/plots.py", line 56, in check_font
    return ImageFont.truetype(str(font) if font.exists() else font.name, size)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 853, in truetype
    return freetype(font)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 850, in freetype
    return FreeTypeFont(font, size, index, encoding, layout_engine)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 173, in __init__
    freetype_version = parse_version(features.version_module("freetype2"))
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/packaging/version.py", line 49, in parse
    return Version(version)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/packaging/version.py", line 264, in __init__
    match = self._regex.search(version)
TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "train.py", line 35, in <module>
    import val  # for end-of-epoch mAP
  File "/workspace/folder/yolov5/val.py", line 26, in <module>
    from models.experimental import attempt_load
  File "/workspace/folder/yolov5/models/experimental.py", line 10, in <module>
    from models.common import Conv
  File "/workspace/folder/yolov5/models/common.py", line 23, in <module>
    from utils.plots import Annotator, colors
  File "/workspace/folder/yolov5/utils/plots.py", line 64, in <module>
    class Annotator:
  File "/workspace/folder/yolov5/utils/plots.py", line 66, in Annotator
    check_font()  # download TTF if necessary
  File "/workspace/folder/yolov5/utils/plots.py", line 61, in check_font
    return ImageFont.truetype(str(font), size)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 853, in truetype
    return freetype(font)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 850, in freetype
    return FreeTypeFont(font, size, index, encoding, layout_engine)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 173, in __init__
    freetype_version = parse_version(features.version_module("freetype2"))
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/packaging/version.py", line 49, in parse
    return Version(version)
  File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.8/site-packages/packaging/version.py", line 264, in __init__
    match = self._regex.search(version)
TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object

Expected behavior

Expected to start training

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 18.04
• GPU: RTX 3060

[github-actions]

👋 Hello @wennycooper, thank you for your interest in YOLOv5 🚀! Please visit our ⭐️ Tutorials to get started, where you can find quickstart guides for simple tasks like Custom Data Training all the way to advanced concepts like Hyperparameter Evolution.

If this is a 🐛 Bug Report, please provide screenshots and minimum viable code to reproduce your issue, otherwise we can not help you.

If this is a custom training ❓ Question, please provide as much information as possible, including dataset images, training logs, screenshots, and a public link to online W&B logging if available.

For business inquiries or professional support requests please visit https://ultralytics.com or email Glenn Jocher at glenn.jocher@ultralytics.com.

Requirements

Python>=3.6.0 with all requirements.txt installed including PyTorch>=1.7. To get started:

$ git clone https://github.com/ultralytics/yolov5
$ cd yolov5
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Environments

YOLOv5 may be run in any of the following up-to-date verified environments (with all dependencies including CUDA/CUDNN, Python and PyTorch preinstalled):

• Google Colab and Kaggle notebooks with free GPU:
• Google Cloud Deep Learning VM. See GCP Quickstart Guide
• Amazon Deep Learning AMI. See AWS Quickstart Guide
• Docker Image. See Docker Quickstart Guide

Status

If this badge is green, all YOLOv5 GitHub Actions Continuous Integration (CI) tests are currently passing. CI tests verify correct operation of YOLOv5 training (train.py), validation (val.py), inference (detect.py) and export (export.py) on MacOS, Windows, and Ubuntu every 24 hours and on every commit.

[glenn-jocher]

@wennycooper you've got an environment error caused by PIL. Can you put a breakpoint in here to see what is being passed to ImageFont.truetype() in utils/plots.py", line 56?

    return ImageFont.truetype(str(font) if font.exists() else font.name, size)

[wennycooper]

Sorry that I've reinstalled the environment and the problem was gone.
I will close this issue. Thanks!

[rambles-tech]

I also had this issue. I was able to resolve it by uninstalling and then reinstalling pillow:
pip3 uninstall -y pillow
pip3 install pillow

[glenn-jocher]

@wennycooper @rambles-tech good news 😃! Your original issue may now be fixed ✅ in PR #5592. This PR updates the Docker base image to 21.10 and also updates PIL, which was the root cause of this bug.

To receive this update:

• Git – git pull from within your yolov5/ directory or git clone https://github.com/ultralytics/yolov5 again
• PyTorch Hub – Force-reload model = torch.hub.load('ultralytics/yolov5', 'yolov5s', force_reload=True)
• Notebooks – View updated notebooks
• Docker – sudo docker pull ultralytics/yolov5:latest to update your image

Thank you for spotting this issue and informing us of the problem. Please let us know if this update resolves the issue for you, and feel free to inform us of any other issues you discover or feature requests that come to mind. Happy trainings with YOLOv5 🚀!