Cannot open display

**ferreter** · 08-08-2003, 05:57 PM

Hello all,

I must be missing something small or silly here as when I go into KDE, pull up Konsole, type in oh say... kpackage &, I get an error along the lines that it cannot open display. What am I missing here? (it will do the same for gvim as well as other programs).

Thanks,
Zach

**fingers99** · 08-08-2003, 10:42 PM

I can't explain the detail of this, but what I think is happening is that no graphical display is available for that user. (Can't replicate this at the moment as I'm in a HD install.)

Try either doing

sudo gvim

in an Xterm

or (easiest by far)

just running it from the menu.

**ferreter** · 08-09-2003, 12:02 AM

Well I'm in the HD install when I try this but a permissions issue would make the most sense but it happens when I su - to root as well. Hrrmm... I know I've been able to open GUI apps via the console before but that was with eterm and not konsole.

**fingers99** · 08-09-2003, 03:30 AM

Odd. I've yet to move from Knoppix to another user, but running as Knoppix, snapping open Konsole and typing gvim works fine. If, on the other hand, I'm (so to speak) graphically Knoppix, su to root and type gvim, it opens as well! WOW! I've never seen that before: certainly SuSE always used to pop up the errors you're getting. I'm running a knx-hdinstall on KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-06-06-EN.iso.

Does look very much like a permissions issue.......

**Dave_Bechtel** · 08-09-2003, 11:02 PM

--Are you installed to HD? If you're starting KDE manually you should see if the $DISPLAY var is set:
' echo $DISPLAY '

--If not, you should:
' export DISPLAY=:0.0 ' and then startx. You can also do this from konsole and then try starting an app; but it's pretty weird behavior nonetheless.

Originally Posted by ferreter

Hello all,

I must be missing something small or silly here as when I go into KDE, pull up Konsole, type in oh say... kpackage &, I get an error along the lines that it cannot open display. What am I missing here? (it will do the same for gvim as well as other programs).

Thanks,
Zach

**ferreter** · 08-11-2003, 05:38 PM

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

--Are you installed to HD? If you're starting KDE manually you should see if the $DISPLAY var is set:
' echo $DISPLAY '

--If not, you should:
' export DISPLAY=:0.0 ' and then startx. You can also do this from konsole and then try starting an app; but it's pretty weird behavior nonetheless.

Well I did the new knoppix-install and use a created user with graphical login (the default for this install, you don't seem to be given a choice in the install script). I also can get wav files to work but not CDs. I did finally get the networking up and running correctly as that didn't seem to be setup on install. (Learned that I really like the Debian networking tools

) I eventually want to get VMware running but not until I iron out these bugs hehe.

**fingers99** · 08-11-2003, 05:54 PM

I also can get wav files to work but not CDs

Aha. I've seen this before. Pop up KMix and make sure the red light is on under the CD icon and move the slider up: it's always muted by default. Note that KsCD also has its own (horizontal) volume slider.

**Dave_Bechtel** · 08-11-2003, 11:09 PM

--For the life of me, I will NEVER understand this behavior. ALSA is the same way - muted by default. ??? WTF? It only annoys the users!!

Originally Posted by fingers99

I also can get wav files to work but not CDs

Aha. I've seen this before. Pop up KMix and make sure the red light is on under the CD icon and move the slider up: it's always muted by default. Note that KsCD also has its own (horizontal) volume slider.

**ferreter** · 08-13-2003, 04:21 PM

Well pulling up apps from the console seem to magically work now. Uncertain what I did beside fixing my network connection to come up at boot. Bizzare.

But with the music CDs, kmix doesn't have the CD muted but when I go to press play xmms seems to freeze. I use the via82cxxx_audio module. Again, other sounds work just fine, its just the CDs. dmesg gives me a line that says: via_audio: ignoring drain playback error -11

lsmod produces:Module Size Used by Not tainted
parport_pc 24776 1 (autoclean)
lp 7492 0 (autoclean)
parport 22496 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
pcmcia_core 39456 0
autofs4 8724 0 (unused)
af_packet 13448 0
agpgart 34592 0 (unused)
via82cxxx_audio 19708 2
ac97_codec 10696 0 [via82cxxx_audio]
uart401 5988 0 [via82cxxx_audio]
sound 54476 0 [via82cxxx_audio uart401]
soundcore 3364 4 [via82cxxx_audio sound]
8139too 17128 1
mii 2176 0 [8139too]
serial 51812 0
usb-uhci 21836 0 (unused)
usbcore 57376 0 [usb-uhci]
apm 9768 1
rtc 6876 0
ext3 62688 1
jbd 45524 1 [ext3]

I'm a bit stumped on this one.

**ferreter** · 08-13-2003, 05:53 PM

Also, I can now use apps like gvim with my normal user but it gives that "E233: cannot open display" error when I su - to root and attempt to open the program that way.