cannot open display: (null)

jhwilliams · 07-12-2007, 11:09 PM

Just installed Debian 4.0r0. I keep getting this message whenever I try to run any X app from gnome-terminal. Setting the DISPLAY variable doesn't help. Any ideas?

navy:~# gedit
cannot open display: (null)

jlliagre · 07-13-2007, 01:26 AM

What says:

Code:

DISPLAY=:0 gedit

jhwilliams · 07-13-2007, 05:00 AM

stderr on gnome-terminal

jlliagre · 07-13-2007, 06:01 AM

Can you elaborate ?

jhwilliams · 07-13-2007, 07:38 AM

I can try; although I don't have much more info :-(

X is running fine, I can open gedit, xterm, et cetera what-have-you from the GNOME Applications menu. None-the-less, any attempt to open an X app from an actual terminal, or my terminal-emulator in X, gnome-terminal, causes the X app in question to stderr the type of message I copied above. xterm, for example, complains that the DISPLAY variable is not set, and mentions Xlib. All critical X libs are installed, though.

Basically, I'll do this:

Code:

bash# DISPLAY=:0.0
bash# echo $DISPLAY
:0.0
bash# gedit

, which then prompts the above error message.

jlliagre · 07-13-2007, 10:48 AM

You didn't run the command I suggested, which exports the DISPLAY variable to gedit.

The commands you run are missing the export part.

jhwilliams · 07-13-2007, 05:54 PM

right you are; that works! Sorry I missed that before.