problem with X11iraf on macintel

jcl wrote on Aug 24, 2006

Hi. I have sucessfully (I think) installed IRAF on an Intel Macbook Pro, but the x11iraf applications do not work. I get the following error:

xgterm Xt error: Can't open display:

I am new to Mac OSX, but have been using IRAF, xgterm, ds9, etc. for years on a Linux PC.

Thanks,

Jessica

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Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Aug 24, 2006

It probably just means you didn't start X before trying to start XGterm. The normal aqua window environment doesn't support raw X11 applications so you need to start the X server first, i.e. Applications->Utilities->X11 or

% open - a X11

from a terminal window.

-Mike

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jcl wrote on Aug 24, 2006

I do have X11 running. I also get the folliwing error when trying to run ds9 (maybe this will help figure out the problem):

Application initialization failed: no display name and no $DISPLAY environment variable
Error in startup script: invalid command name "option"
while executing
"option add "*Entry*BorderWidth" 1"
(file "./zvfsmntpt/src/ds9.tcl" line 10)

Thanks,

Jessica

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Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Aug 24, 2006

It shouldn't be necessary, but try

xgterm -display :0.0

or

setenv DISPLAY :0.0

before starting xgterm/ds9. I hadn't seen the ds9 error you report before but it may be related to the failure to connect to the X server.

-Mike

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jcl wrote on Aug 24, 2006

That worked! I don't understand why that is necessary, but at least it's fixed. Thank you so much!

Jessica

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sirmarcos wrote on Aug 24, 2006

I'm several months late to this thread, but if one tries to run X11 applications from the OS X Terminal in /Applications/Utilities the DISPLAY variable is not set. So, another solution would be to make sure you're using one of the xterms in X11 and not OS X's own Terminal.

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Last post on Aug 24, 2006