[aklug] Re: Using X11

Agreed, X is a very powerful tool, with lots of built in usefulness. The p=
referred way to attach (RWGBOI) is via X tunnels with SSH. Most current ap=
plications can work remote X with this. It wasn't always so. Which brings=
 me to the point of my post here.

In a word, um, help?

We've got one of those apps. It's a solaris 2.5.1 based system from the 90=
's. The app is a heavily bastardized on-off control system. Also from the=
 90's (actually, I think from the late 80's, but not sure about that). It =
can do remote as Shane and others have described, but it's too old to under=
stand and work with ssh X tunnels. =20

Remote X is fine. It wants and expects to connect to mydesktop:0.0. Fine =
and good. I can shell into the remotehost (solaris 2.5.1), set the display=
 to mydesktop:0.0 (a centos5.3 box), and do all the usual xclock, emacs, ne=
dit, whatever. All good. =20

But, when I try to run the app, it starts, draws some nice boxes, I see stu=
ff I should see, then get an error that says 'unable to allocate colors'. =
=20

I've poked and prodded at this for a couple of years now. It seems that th=
e old app wants 256 colors, and gets cranky if mydesktop is different. Goo=
gling yields the valuable information that (summarized) 'some old or poorly=
 behaved applications may expect 16 or 256 colors'. The usual suggestion o=
n how to handle this is to not write the application to do that in the firs=
t place. =20

The phrase 'private colormap' comes up sometimes, but there's no real layma=
n explanation of what to do with those or how to set them up. Closest I've=
 seen was a lot of C code, which starts to look like way more trouble than =
I want to go to.

So, to summarize, to all you really smart and experienced folk out there, i=
s there an easy way to get past this 256 color allocation issue? Or is the=
 'easy' way to wait until this system is junked and the new system is spec'=
ed and installed?

Thanks!
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Received on Mon Apr 13 08:53:05 2009