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Re: 1.5.18-1: "DISPLAY is not set"


At 12:11 PM 10/6/2005, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I downloaded the latest version (2.510.2.2) of setup.exe from www.cygwin.com 
>the other day, and installed it along with several packages. When I tried to 
>run commands from the bash, I had some problems (e.g. that the path variable 
>was not correctly set). From the FAQ I found out that setup.exe was supposed 
>to create the file "etc/profile", but for some reason this had not been done - 
>the file did not exist. However, I did find the 
>file "/etc/defaults/etc/profile" which I copied into the "etc/" folder. After 
>having done that, cygwin now works fine for all purely text-based purposes. 
>However, when I try to run anything that demands a graphical display, e.g. 
>xterm, I get the error message:
>
>xterm XT error: Can't open display:
>xterm: DISPLAY is not set
>
>I'm guessing it might be the case that setup.exe was supposed to create a file 
>which sets DISPLAY when the bash is started, but that it did not for the same 
>reason that it did not create the "/etc/profile" file, whatever that reason 
>was. I have tried to experiment by creating a DISPLAY environment variable and 
>giving it different values I've seen used in other places (e.g. :0.0), but to 
>no avail - the bash then instead complains that it can't open that display. I 
>have also tried re-running setup.exe, but that did not help either.
>
>Thus the most simple formulation of my question would be: How should I set 
>DISPLAY so that the programs demanding graphical displays will work?
>
>If this question is not possible to answer because the correct value depends 
>on some factor or the other, my question is instead: Was setup.exe supposed to 
>create a file for setting the DISPLAY variable, and if so, is there any simple 
>way to aquire this file?


I think you need to back up and address the apparent installation problems
you had.  Try rerunning 'setup.exe'.  Clearly the postinstall scripts 
didn't run the first time (or not all of them).  Re-running 'setup.exe'
should either make this happen or provide the basis for some "debugging".
Once you've rerun 'setup.exe', check '/etc/postinstall'.  All the script
files in this directory should have a '.done' suffix.  If that's not the 
case, postinstall scripts are still not running properly.  Check for clues
in '/var/log/setup.log' and '/var/log/setup.log.full'.  You want to have 
'setup.exe' do the work that it's supposed to do for you, otherwise you're
going to have allot of guesswork to do when things go wrong on your system.

That said, and I do think the above is very worth your time and effort, I
suspect you just didn't start the X server.  Please see 
<http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/cygwin-x-ug.html> for details on getting 
started with Cygwin/X.  Also, please note that there is a separate email
list for Cygwin/X questions.  Please see <http://cygwin.com/lists.html>
for more details on the available lists and what's on-topic for each list.



--
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746                     


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