XQuartz and DISPLAY variable

Look in ~/Library/LaunchAgents to see if there is something resetting $DISPLAY, and it might we worth doing a "ls -a" in your home directory, or gzipping all the dot files, and then see if the problem goes away.

I had this problem and solved it, although my circumstances may be a bit unique: A long time ago I tried an older version XQuartz in Snow Leopard. But I decided to stick with Apple's X11, so I disabled XQuartz by issuing the launchctl unload command as described in the XQuartz FAQ.

This past weekend, I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. When I tried to start Gimp, I got a screen informing me that I needed to install XQuartz. I installed version 2.7.2, logged out, and logged back in. Gimp wouldn't start, and when I started Terminal, my DISPLAY variable was not defined.

I thought that a reinstall of XQuartz would re-enable launchd, but apparently that did not happen. So I issued the following terminal command:

launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist

logged out, and back in, and that fixed my problem! You might want to try this command; it may not help you but it can't hurt.

Thanks for this. Let me pass along my experience. X11 has been working fine for me for years, but all of a suddent $DISPLAY was no longer getting set.

I was pulling my hair out until I found this thread. I looked and sure enough launchctl was not showing that X11 was running on startup at all. I looked in /Library/LaunchAgents and it was entirely empty.

And why was it empty? About a week ago, I was having problems with my MBP which eventually led to a logic board replacement. Appled had tried to diagnose it over the phone, and *** part of their usual procedure was to have me entirely delete /Library/LaunchAgents/ and ~/Library/LaunchAgents ***. Not knowing any better I went ahead and did what they told me to. So, naturally, X11 was not starting up properly.

Well, problem solved... I re-installed XQuartz and now $DISPLAY is getting set properly.

/Library/LaunchAgents

contains launchd items installed by third-party applications, so under normal circumstances, the advice from Apple to clean that directory out is good advice. X11 is now technically third-party, so that is why /Library/LaunchAgents/org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist resides where it does. If the file is present, but X11 is still not launching automatically, due to having been deactivated somehow, the command

launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist

should restore the expected behavior.

This message on XQuartz-dev mailing list helped me come to the conclusion that my /Library/LaunchAgents directory was group writable. This

sudo chmod 755 /Library/LaunchAgents

fixed the problem of the XQuartz agent not starting for me.

I had the same exact problem as Cimmy and was going completely crazy looking for an answer... but I did what Frank Caggiano suggested and it worked perfectly!

local $ grep DISPLAY ~/.*rc ~/.login ~/.*profile ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist 2>/dev/null

local $ grep -r DISPLAY /opt/local/etc /sw/etc /etc 2>/dev/null

Now I get:

$ echo $DISPLAY

/tmp/launch-P7FEic/org.macosforge.xquartz:0

Instead of 2 blank lines, and I can launch xterm and xgterm 🙂

Thank you so much!!!

I recently had this problem with Mavericks, but resolved it as follows:

(1) From XQuartz, open an X terminal (xterm).

(2) Within your X terminal (xterm window), type

echo $DISPLAY

On my computer, this command gives the output :3. So now you know what your DISPLAY environment variable should be set to.

(3) Within a standard (not X) terminal, type

export DISPLAY=:3

Now xdvi (and other X applications) should (might, hopefully will) work within a standard terminal. Of course, you could add the export command to your .profile file, so that your DISPLAY variable is automatically set whenever you open a new terminal.

Update:

Sorry, forget my previous suggestion. Simply rebooting (MacBook Pro, running Mavericks) after installing XQuartz seems to be a more effective solution. After rebooting, my DISPLAY variable was reset as follows:

echo $DISPLAY

/tmp/launch-kiNBQZ/org.macosforge.xquartz:0

and I now can run X applications (xdvi, xclock, etc.).

Hi All,

I have been using Snowleopard with X11 happily in the past but since I have upgraded to El Capitan and Quartz I face a very annoying issue. The problem is after I connect to my server using "ssh -X ..." it starts Quartz and everything works without any issue but when that specific terminal left idol for a short period of time, then I get the error of "cannot connect to display" error and I have to disconnect from server and reconnect with "ssh -X ..." again.

I would appreciate any suggestion on how to resolve this.

Many thanks in advance

Ashkan

The default timeout on ForwardX11Timeout (.ssh/config) is 20 minutes. See Bob's response at the bottom of this superuser post. I think his recommendation for ForwardX11Timeout will resolve your issue. See man ssh_config.

You might want to ask over on the Apple X11 mailing list.

Yeah; my bad; it's not DISPLAY, it's starting up the X server (before the connection arrives) that makes it easiest to launch the ssh -Y from the xterm in my sequences.

Again, try changing your shell, or, alternatively, create a new test account, and see if it works from that. If so, you know it is something in your own account's configuration files.

It seems like posts cannot be edited here after some (not very long) timeout so I have to add this here - there is no org.x:0 file anywhere in /tmp either.

In my case, I did not have X11 server installed on the remote CentOS server machine. All I had to do was run the command:

yum -y groupinstall "X Window System"

and reinitiate the remote ssh access.