Gtk-Warning **: Cannot open display

[Norberto Meijome]

On Thu, 18 May 2006 16:59:33 +0100 (BST)
"Barnaby Scott" <bds at waywood.co.uk> wrote:

> >> 1) Forgive my stupidity, but why can I not start Firefox from the
> >> console? Or rather, what could I do to make it do so with a single
> >> command?
> >
> > I'm perfectly willing to be wrong, flamed, and corrected, but my counter
> > question (and it seems a good one to me):  how do you expect to run a
> > graphical program in a non-graphical environment?
> 
> I'm certainly not going to flame or correct you! I'm afraid it shows the
> profundity of my ignorance at this stage, but at least I have browser
> functionality without rebooting back into Windows now, so looking up
> solutions and sorting my own problems just got a whole lot easier. I guess
> my beginner's reasoning was something like this: if a program  needs a gui
> to work, then maybe it has a mechanism to fire one up when needed, in the
> same way it will look for and use whatever libraries or resources it
> needs. Oh dear, looks like I have loads more reading to do.

Hi,

Saifi's reply should get it all to work, and it comes in handy to understand
why. 

Saifi wrote
> 1. prompt$ xhost + (from the connecting client)
> 2. export DISPLAY=client-ip-address:0.0

XWindows is a network service. You need a) to tell your client WHERE to send
the 'graphics' ( that's point 2) in Saifi's mail. and b) Xorg has to allow you
to connect to it (has to allow you to send  *your* apps' graphs into its
displays.

When you start an X session, DISPLAY env var is set automatically:

[betom at ayiin] [Fri May 19 11:06:49 2006]
~
$ env | grep DISPLAY
DISPLAY=:0.0

I am not completelly sure how do clients inside the session get authorised -
BUT anything that is NOT started from another host OR a different user than the
one owning the display (Xorg ) you want to use will need to be authorised with
xhost.

I just tested this doing Ctrl-Alt-F1, logging as myself again, i typed aterm,
then went back to X and there it was my new term. WHY you couldnt do that with
firefox, i dont know.

HIH.
Beto