Arch Linux

Boxes

Member

From: Virginia, USA

Registered: 2011-12-13

Posts: 40

[Solved] Openbox-Message: Failed to open the display from the ....

Hey, I'm new to Arch and I've been working on setting it up on my Laptop and so far I haven't had very many problems save one.  I can't get any of the available Window Managers.  Whenever I try running them I get a message like:

"wmii: fatal: Can't open display," or "Error: Couldn't connect to XServer" (Fluxbox), or "twm: unable to open display" or "dwm: cannot open display" or "Openbox-Message: Failed to open display from the DISPLAY environment variable,".  What am I supposed to do?  I've checked to see if it was a problem with my installation of Openbox by reinstalling that and installing several other window managers, and I've checked to see if it was a problem with me not having the right kernel modules loaded, but after I ran "hwdetect --load-modules," which is supposed to load all detectable modules, but even after that I still get the same messages.  Any ideas, I've tried just about everything that I know\have thought about, so yeah... any ideas? 

You'd need to provide us with details on your system. For example, what GPU are you using? hwdetect can be hit-and-miss sometimes.

How exactly are you trying to run them? Are you trying to run them as root? Are you using .xinitrc? If so, post it.

Uh... I try running them by typing: "openbox" or "twm" or "wmii" or "xinit openbox-session", and when I run "xinit" by itself, I get this:  ". . . (EE) Failed to load module 'glx' (module does not exist, 0), (EE) Failed to load module 'intel' (module dose not exist, 0), (EE) Failed to load module 'vesa' (module does not exist, 0), (EE) Failed to load module 'fbdev' (module does not exist, 0), (EE) No drives available."  Oh, and nGone I'm running an Intel Mobile 4 Chipset.  I don't have a GPU.  I just have an Intel Graphics Controller.

Okay, well I got "xinit openbox" to work by searching for the "intel," "vesa," "fbdev," and "glx" packages via pacman and installing them.  I still can't run openbox without xinit, and I tried running "xinit wmii," but it didn't seem to work, although it did run, but I couldn't do anything.  It looked exactly the same was as "xinit openbox" did right after I installed "vesa," which was the first package I downloaded and installed via pacman.

You need to read a bit more about how X works - you can't run any window manager unless there's a X session for it to run on. That's why xinit works. Set up your ~/.xinitrc correctly and use startx.

xinit wmii ran a wmii session, but I guess you didn't configure it at all - that's why you couldn't do anything. Again, more reading required.

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~ Boxes. 
Load this, store that, I'll make them all pay!

Boxes

Member

From: Virginia, USA

Registered: 2011-12-13

Posts: 40

Re: [Solved] Openbox-Message: Failed to open the display from the ....

Oh, I see.  So an X-session is something that's required.  Oh, okay.

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~ Boxes. 
Load this, store that, I'll make them all pay!