Hello,
Just recently for some reason when I try to open Yast2 my Suse Enterprise it opens the menu style yast instead of the GUI. I’ve read some different articles saying to run xhost + and when I do this I receive "xhost: unable to open display “”.
Can anyone advise me on a possible solution?
Thanks alot
Hi
I’m assuming this is via remote access? If you don’t have an X server
running locally it will fall back to the text (ncurses) mode.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
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Hi gfellerj,
[QUOTE=gfellerj;15615]Hello,
Just recently for some reason when I try to open Yast2 my Suse Enterprise it opens the menu style yast instead of the GUI. I’ve read some different articles saying to run xhost + and when I do this I receive "xhost: unable to open display “”.
Can anyone advise me on a possible solution?
Thanks alot[/QUOTE]
per the response from the “xhost” command, your environment has no “DISPLAY” variable set. You can also check this via “echo $DISPLAY”.
“DISPLAY” tells all X clients (programs that want to create graphical output) which “X server” to use, in the syntax “host:displaynumber.subdisplaynumer”. “host” can be empty and defaults to “localhost”, “subdisplaynumber” (including separating dot) can be left out, too, and defaults to “.0”. So a typical value for “DISPLAY” would be “:0” for the first X server running on your local system, or i.e. “mypc.company.com:0” when connecting to a remote server from “mypc”, havong all output go to you local PC’s display. In the latter case, you’ll also have to permit your local X server to accept connections from remote clients, in (noadays) two steps:
Then you’ll just have to set “DISPLAY” on the remote system to the according value, to redirect the calls to your X server.
Malcolm’s comment probably hit the nail - if you “ssh” to your server, per default no “DISPLAY” value gets set, thus leaving you with ncurses mode for YaST. Depending on the exact circumstances, DISPLAY=:0 won’t work even if an X server is active on the same server - you’d have to i.e. run “xhost +” in an existing graphical session on that server to grant access.
If you still have difficulties, it probably would help if you could comment on
Regards,
Jens
Hello, I am new to Linux/Suse administration and have always been a windows guy but am trying to learn so bear with me.
I am using Xshell to SSH to the main samba server and then running Yast. The funny thing is it worked fine when I was running windows 7 then I had to sent my laptop for warranty work and it came back with win 8 and I haven’t had time to revert it back to 7 and now it doesn’t work.
I am logging into that server as an Admin and and am changing to root level and then running yast.
I believe Xserver must be running on the same samba/file server I’m connecting too.
The result of X host with no parameters is still "unable to open display “”
Hi gfellerj,
I’m sorry for the late reply.
Let me give you a simple run-down on how that “X” stuff works:
The X server must both be reachable the way that “DISPLAY” on the client proposes (always via TCP/IP for a remote connection, locally a “local socket” will do… usually none of your business) and it must permit the connection. You can control access permissions via the “xhosts” command - but let’s leave that for a while, until we have sorted out the basics
You say you’re connecting via SSH to the machine where YaST runs - I take it that by “it worked fine when I was running windows 7” you meant that you received YaST graphical output on your win7 machine. For this to work, the following had to happen:
)From the error message I deduct that the “DISPLAY” variable is either empty or not set at all - probably the latter. You can verify this easily by entering “echo $DISPLAY” after logging in to the Linux machine… if you get no mentionable output, then the variable isn’t set… an “empty line” means the variable exists, but is without content (or full of blanks), and if you see some “true output”, that’s what the variable contains. Could you please perform that test?
The next thing is: If my assumption about the Win7 situation was correct (graphical YaST output on your Win7 machine), then two questions arise:
I believe Xserver must be running on the same samba/file server I’m connecting too.
Were this the case, then you’d have to physically switch from your Win7/8 machine to the server console (after starting YaST) to see and operate the graphical output I guess this wasn’t the case, was it?
As this can get a bit complicated, are you actually after this for learning purposes, or might you as well work with the curses interface of YaST? In the former case I’ll of course guide you through all of this. But in the latter case, we could shorten the discussion substantially 
Regards,
Jens
PS: Running “xhost” on the Linux machine isn’t a required step: You already need to have permission to connect to the X server to use “xhost”, that’s why it usually called from an existing/local graphical session. Try “xterm” instead - when everything works, you’ll see a new command prompt on the X server’s display. (If the command just “hangs”, it’s probably outputting on some unexpected X server - then just kill it with Ctrl-C.)
Hello thanks so much for the reply. I’m am just interest in getting it back to how it was since I have a ton of new student users I need to add and I like the gui much better for this.
I am using Xmanager Enterprise 4 which has Xshell which is what I’m using for SSH. I never did install any type of Xserver on my windows 7 machine (at least that I can remember but maybe I had to of.)
When I perform the echo $ display I receive a blank line with no output at all.
When I perform the xterm command I receive
Xter Xt error: Can’t open display:
xterm: DISPLAY is not set.
Thanks for helping me sort this out.
Okay, I actually followed these instructions here http://www.ece.unm.edu/csg/email/XServer_Putty_Windows7-ECE.pdf to install Xming Server and it is working with Putty now! I haven’t tried it with Xshell again but I don’t see a reason why I just shouldn’t use putty with xming server instead.
gfellerj wrote:
[color=blue]
When I perform the echo $ display I receive a blank line with no output
at all.[/color]
If you did “echo $ display” then that is incorrect - as Jens said, do “echo
$DISPLAY” (where DISPLAY is in uppercase and there is no space between $
and DISPLAY).
Simon
SUSE Knowledge Partner
Hi gfellerj,
great you got it working and thanks for reporting back!
Regards,
Jens