After the installation of OSX Lion, I tried to:
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
But I get this error:
Error opening terminal: xterm-256color
If I try to switch terminal.app preferences to open terminal windows in «xterm color» instead of xterm-256color everything works fine.
What’s happening?
tshepang
11.9k21 gold badges90 silver badges134 bronze badges
asked Jul 24, 2011 at 0:31
1
answered Jul 9, 2014 at 22:34
Meetai.comMeetai.com
6,5163 gold badges31 silver badges38 bronze badges
9
After upgrading to OSX Lion, I started getting this error on certain (Debian/Ubuntu) servers. The fix is simply to install the “ncurses-term” package which provides the file /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color.
This worked for me on a Ubuntu server, via Erik Osterman.
answered Jul 26, 2011 at 3:20
calvinfcalvinf
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0
I can confirm this is a terminfo issue. This is what worked for me. SSH in to the remote machine and run
sudo apt-get install ncurses-term
Boom. Problem solved.
answered Feb 10, 2014 at 19:55
JohnnyJohnny
3,8466 gold badges32 silver badges36 bronze badges
1
-
edit your
.bash_profilefilevim .bash_profile -
commnet
#export TERM=xterm-256color -
add this
export TERMINFO=/usr/share/terminfoexport TERM=xterm-basicto your
.bash_profile -
finally
run:
source .bash_profile
answered Sep 18, 2017 at 19:55
Xu RadmanXu Radman
811 silver badge3 bronze badges
I had this problem connecting to http://sdf.org through Mac OS X Lion. I changed under Terminal Preferences (⌘+,) > Advanced pane, Declare Terminal as to VT-100.
I also marked Delete Sends Ctrl-H because this Mac connection was confusing zsh.
It appears to be working for my use case.
answered Feb 13, 2013 at 5:43
isomorphismesisomorphismes
8,1439 gold badges57 silver badges69 bronze badges
3
I, too, have this problem on an older Mac that I upgraded to Lion.
Before reading the terminfo tip, I was able to get vi and less working by doing «export TERM=xterm».
After reading the tip, I grabbed /usr/share/terminfo from a newer Mac that has fresh install of Lion and does not exhibit this problem.
Now, even though echo $TERM still yields xterm-256color, vi and less now work fine.
tshepang
11.9k21 gold badges90 silver badges134 bronze badges
answered Jul 24, 2011 at 16:39
1
somehow and sometimes «terminfo» folder comes corrupted after a fresh installation.
i don’t know why, but the problem can be solved in this way:
1. Download Lion Installer from the App Store
2. Download unpkg: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/16357/unpkg
3. Open Lion Installer app in Finder (Right click -> Show Package
Contents)
4. Open InstallESD.dmg (under SharedSupport)
5. Unpack BSD.pkg with unpkg (Located under Packages) Term info
will be located in the new BSD folder in /usr/share/terminfo
hope it helps.
answered Jul 24, 2011 at 1:21
LukeLuke
2,9566 gold badges33 silver badges44 bronze badges
2
Mine was quite a unique case but this could help someone. On Android I tried to copy nano from my termux binary folder to /system/xbin. Placed all the library dependencies in /system/lib and got this error. The libncurses.so.6 file I copied from termux had it’s TERMINFO file still pointed to /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/share/terminfo
View pointed path with command
strings path-to-libncurses.so | grep /terminfo
To fix either make the termux terminfo dir and subdirs readable and executable by the nano user or copy the terminfo folder somewhere else and use a hexeditor to modify the plain text path in the shared library file.
Link to zipped terminfo folder
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m1tfHgkGRehBGh1jPMK4EaTgQb9EyCG7/view?usp=drivesdk
answered Nov 2, 2018 at 15:02
1
I hear that this can be fixed by overwriting your /usr/share/terminfo with one from the computer of somebody with a working install of Lion. I can’t confirm whether this works or not, and unfortunately I haven’t upgraded yet, so I can’t provide you with that file.
answered Jul 24, 2011 at 0:35
EdoDodoEdoDodo
8,1603 gold badges23 silver badges30 bronze badges
You can add the following in your .bashrc
if [ "$TERM" = xterm ]; then TERM=xterm-256color; fi
answered Mar 10, 2015 at 21:20
This worked for me on linux mint, based on the link provided by @Meetai.com.
Put this in .bashrc and restart the terminal:
TERM=»xterm»
export TERM
answered Sep 9, 2022 at 6:04
So I am trying to install PlayOnLinux with the terminal using these commands.
$ wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
OK
$ sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_bionic.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
--2020-04-21 21:48:13-- http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_bionic.list
Resolving deb.playonlinux.com (deb.playonlinux.com)... 51.254.83.230, 2001:41d0:2:37ca::1e
Connecting to deb.playonlinux.com (deb.playonlinux.com)|51.254.83.230|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 44
Saving to: ‘/etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list’
/etc/apt/sources.li 100%[===================>] 44 --.-KB/s in 0s
2020-04-21 21:48:13 (4.60 MB/s) - ‘/etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list’ saved [44/44]
$ sudo apt-get update
Hit:1 http://repo.steampowered.com/steam precise InRelease
Hit:2 http://ppa.launchpad.net/lutris-team/lutris/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Hit:3 http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04 ./ InRelease
Hit:4 http://deb.playonlinux.com bionic InRelease
Hit:5 https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
W: Target Packages (main/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Packages (main/binary-i386/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Packages (main/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en_US) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-all.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11-icons-small (main/dep11/icons-48x48.tar) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11-icons (main/dep11/icons-64x64.tar) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-amd64) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-all) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Packages (main/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Packages (main/binary-i386/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Packages (main/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en_US) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-all.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11-icons-small (main/dep11/icons-48x48.tar) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target DEP-11-icons (main/dep11/icons-64x64.tar) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-amd64) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-all) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:68 and /etc/apt/sources.list:74
$ sudo apt-get install xterm playonlinux
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package xterm is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'xterm' has no installation candidate
I’m relatively new to Ubuntu, so I would appreciate some step by step assistance with this issue.
asked Apr 22, 2020 at 4:56
6
For the Bionic version
Type the following commands:
wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_bionic.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux
Or use the following command to directly download the package and install
wget https://www.playonlinux.com/script_files/PlayOnLinux/4.3.4/PlayOnLinux_4.3.4.deb
chmod 777 PlayOnLinux_4.3.4.deb
sudo dpkg -i PlayOnLinux_4.3.4.deb
answered Apr 22, 2020 at 10:42
“Xterm display is not set” is an error message that advanced Linux users must have encountered at some point. Xterm is a Terminal Emulator that works on top of the operating system’s default terminal emulator. It is used to run command-line programs while still working in the GUI background. Xterm is the default standard terminal system for the X Window System desktop environment. Xterm runs the user shell, i.e., the default shell on the user’s system. The official website for Xterm is https://invisible-island.net/xterm/.
Contents
- 1 What is Xterm
- 2 Installing Xterm
- 2.1 Installing Xterm on Debian Based OS
- 2.2 Downloading the source code
- 3 Xterm Display is not set
- 4 2 Methods to Fix Xterm Display is Not Set
- 4.1 Dispay variable
- 4.2 Desktop environments
- 5 cygwin xterm display is not set
- 6 Aix xterm: display is not set
- 7 WSL xterm not opening display is not set
- 8 FAQs
- 8.1 Is Xterm available in Windows?
- 8.2 What do you mean by FTP?
- 8.3 What is the full form of SSh and SSL?
- 9 Conclusion
- 10 Trending Now
What is Xterm
Xterm is a terminal emulator aside from the default terminal emulators of the operating system. Xterm runs over the user’s terminal and uses the same shell as the user’s default. Unlike other terminal emulators that can just run without a graphical display output, Xterm requires a GUI to run. Error messages like “Xterm display is not set” can come up in unsuitable environments. It runs on all the UNIX-based operating systems. Just as gnome-terminal is the default terminal emulator of the GNOME desktop environment, Xterm is the default terminal emulator for X Window system environment.
Installing Xterm
If you do not have Xterm installed on your system, you could easily install it using the default package manager of your operating system. Or, if you have Xterm installed already and it is showing “Xterm display is not set,” try reinstalling or updating the package as it might help eradicate the error problem. Different distributions of Linux use other package managers to download and install programs. For example, Debian-based distros use dpkg package manager while Arch-based distributions use Pacman.
Installing Xterm on Debian Based OS
Follow the given steps to download and install Xterm on Debian-based systems.
- Open the default terminal emulator.
- Type the following command in the shell.
sudo apt install xterm- You would be prompted to enter the root password in order to install it.
- Enter Y(yes) when promted to, wait for the downloading and installation to complete.
Downloading the source code
If you are on other platforms than Debian, you could download the source code file from the official website of Xterm and then extract it yourself on your system. follow the steps to download the term source code manually.
- Head to Xterm’s official website. https://invisible-island.net/xterm/
- Under the download section. choose the protocol you want to use to download the compressed file.
- Choose http if you are using a browser or ftp is downloading through terminal.
- Download the tar.gz file and extract it.
As mentioned earlier, Xterm requires a GUI display environment to work seamlessly. If the DISPLAY environment variable is not set for the Xterm terminal emulator, it won’t work, and ‘Xterm display is not set’ would be shown as the output. If you are using an SSL connection to a remote server that doesn’t have any display environment installed, you are more likely to face an Xterm display is not set issue.
- input:
xterm- output:
xterm: Xt error: Can't open display:
xterm: DISPLAY is not set2 Methods to Fix Xterm Display is Not Set
The following fixes can be tried to resolve the Xterm display is not set issue.
Dispay variable
The “Xterm display is not set issue” can be resolved by setting the DISPLAY environment in the terminal before connecting to the remote host. Run the following commands shown in the image to set your display output variable and then log in to the ssh session with the remote host.
NOTE – The username and remote host are to be replaced with the actual username and remote-host name of the server you are trying to connect, respectively.
Desktop environments
A desktop environment is a set of GUI programs that runs on top of the underlying operating system. It is responsible for all the visible elements of the operating system. The same underlying operating system can have different desktop environments. Users can even switch to other desktop environments without reinstalling the operating system as per their appearance or performance preferences. Some famous desktop environments are Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc. The point is, an operating system can run even without a desktop environment, for example, vanilla Arch Linux.
In such a case, only a command-line terminal is available to interact with the system, so the applications that depend on the GUI elements like Xterm would not work. Therefore another way to resolve the “Xterm display is not set” issue is to ensure that the host system has a suitable desktop environment. If the problem persists trying switching the environment. You could visit the official websites of the popular desktop environments of your choice and follow the installation process mentioned there.
cygwin xterm display is not set
Cygwin is a Unix-based programming runtime environment compatible with Microsoft windows. Unix-based applications can efficiently be run on Windows using the Cygwin environment. Xterm is a GUI-based program and requires an X windows system to run, Which can be done by running an X server on the host system. The Xterm would show the error message “Xterm display is not set without the X server running.”
To work around this issue, you need to install two packages in your Cygwin environment, Xorg-server and xinit. After installing these two packages, start the server by running the startxwin command and then set the display variable below.
Aix xterm: display is not set
Aix, which stands for Advanced Interactive Executive, is a proprietary operating system series based on UNIX. Again, to run Xterm in this AIX environment Display variable needs to be set. And the X server needs to be started. Run the following commands to eradicate the “xterm display is not set” error.
startx
xclock
export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
xinitWSL xterm not opening display is not set
WSL is short for Windows Subsystem for Linux; it is a compatibility layer between the Microsoft Windows operating system and Linux packages. It allows users to run native Linux binary executables on Windows machines. Using WSL, Xterm can be made to run on Windows. WSL2 has a slightly different way of resolving servers’ name, which could cause issues with X server’s DISPLAY variable. Run the following command to set your display variable in WSL Xterm.
export DISPLAY=$(grep nameserver /etc/resolv.conf | awk '{print $2}'):0.0
FAQs
Is Xterm available in Windows?
No, natively, it is not. It is for UNIX-based OSs.
What do you mean by FTP?
It stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is used to transfer large files across the internet.
What is the full form of SSh and SSL?
The full form of SSh is Secured Shell, and the complete form of SSL is Secure Socket Layer.
Conclusion
Xterm is a terminal emulator like other terminal emulators like gnome-terminal. The difference is, it runs on top of the user’s terminal and even uses the same shell. One additional feature in the Xterm shell is that it supports 8-bit colors. We saw that the “Xterm display is not set” error message can show up if the DISPLAY variable is not set and how to resolve that issues in just two commands. Then we discussed how the desktop environment could make a difference if the problem persists.
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After the installation of OSX Lion, I tried to:
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
But I get this error:
Error opening terminal: xterm-256color
If I try to switch terminal.app preferences to open terminal windows in «xterm color» instead of xterm-256color everything works fine.
What’s happening?
tshepang
11.9k21 gold badges90 silver badges134 bronze badges
asked Jul 24, 2011 at 0:31
1
answered Jul 9, 2014 at 22:34
Meetai.comMeetai.com
6,5163 gold badges31 silver badges38 bronze badges
9
After upgrading to OSX Lion, I started getting this error on certain (Debian/Ubuntu) servers. The fix is simply to install the “ncurses-term” package which provides the file /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color.
This worked for me on a Ubuntu server, via Erik Osterman.
answered Jul 26, 2011 at 3:20
calvinfcalvinf
3,7053 gold badges27 silver badges41 bronze badges
0
I can confirm this is a terminfo issue. This is what worked for me. SSH in to the remote machine and run
sudo apt-get install ncurses-term
Boom. Problem solved.
answered Feb 10, 2014 at 19:55
JohnnyJohnny
3,8466 gold badges32 silver badges36 bronze badges
1
-
edit your
.bash_profilefilevim .bash_profile -
commnet
#export TERM=xterm-256color -
add this
export TERMINFO=/usr/share/terminfoexport TERM=xterm-basicto your
.bash_profile -
finally
run:
source .bash_profile
answered Sep 18, 2017 at 19:55
Xu RadmanXu Radman
811 silver badge3 bronze badges
I had this problem connecting to http://sdf.org through Mac OS X Lion. I changed under Terminal Preferences (⌘+,) > Advanced pane, Declare Terminal as to VT-100.
I also marked Delete Sends Ctrl-H because this Mac connection was confusing zsh.
It appears to be working for my use case.
answered Feb 13, 2013 at 5:43
isomorphismesisomorphismes
8,1439 gold badges57 silver badges69 bronze badges
3
I, too, have this problem on an older Mac that I upgraded to Lion.
Before reading the terminfo tip, I was able to get vi and less working by doing «export TERM=xterm».
After reading the tip, I grabbed /usr/share/terminfo from a newer Mac that has fresh install of Lion and does not exhibit this problem.
Now, even though echo $TERM still yields xterm-256color, vi and less now work fine.
tshepang
11.9k21 gold badges90 silver badges134 bronze badges
answered Jul 24, 2011 at 16:39
1
somehow and sometimes «terminfo» folder comes corrupted after a fresh installation.
i don’t know why, but the problem can be solved in this way:
1. Download Lion Installer from the App Store
2. Download unpkg: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/16357/unpkg
3. Open Lion Installer app in Finder (Right click -> Show Package
Contents)
4. Open InstallESD.dmg (under SharedSupport)
5. Unpack BSD.pkg with unpkg (Located under Packages) Term info
will be located in the new BSD folder in /usr/share/terminfo
hope it helps.
answered Jul 24, 2011 at 1:21
LukeLuke
2,9566 gold badges33 silver badges44 bronze badges
2
Mine was quite a unique case but this could help someone. On Android I tried to copy nano from my termux binary folder to /system/xbin. Placed all the library dependencies in /system/lib and got this error. The libncurses.so.6 file I copied from termux had it’s TERMINFO file still pointed to /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/share/terminfo
View pointed path with command
strings path-to-libncurses.so | grep /terminfo
To fix either make the termux terminfo dir and subdirs readable and executable by the nano user or copy the terminfo folder somewhere else and use a hexeditor to modify the plain text path in the shared library file.
Link to zipped terminfo folder
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m1tfHgkGRehBGh1jPMK4EaTgQb9EyCG7/view?usp=drivesdk
answered Nov 2, 2018 at 15:02
1
I hear that this can be fixed by overwriting your /usr/share/terminfo with one from the computer of somebody with a working install of Lion. I can’t confirm whether this works or not, and unfortunately I haven’t upgraded yet, so I can’t provide you with that file.
answered Jul 24, 2011 at 0:35
EdoDodoEdoDodo
8,1603 gold badges23 silver badges30 bronze badges
You can add the following in your .bashrc
if [ "$TERM" = xterm ]; then TERM=xterm-256color; fi
answered Mar 10, 2015 at 21:20
This worked for me on linux mint, based on the link provided by @Meetai.com.
Put this in .bashrc and restart the terminal:
TERM=»xterm»
export TERM
answered Sep 9, 2022 at 6:04
- Forum
- The Ubuntu Forum Community
- Ubuntu Official Flavours Support
- Desktop Environments
- [SOLVED] Error opening terminal: xterm.
-
Error opening terminal: xterm.
Using Ubuntu 14.04
When i type «nano» into the terminal I receive the following message:
Error opening terminal: xterm.Typing «top» will give this message:
‘xterm’: unknown terminal type.Word wrap is not working when I push backspace on a multi-line command.
Ctrl+Alt+F6 -> commands work fine.
xterm works fine.
Have tried creating a new user but it has the same problem.
Tried what was suggested here but it doesn’t help.Any other suggestions out there?
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
Not all that familiar with the Unity system, but in Systems > Settings > Preferences, which terminal is set as preferred?
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
Just adding to the list of symptoms. When typing «man <something>» The following message will be shown «WARNING: terminal is not fully functional»
I found this command to find out which terminal is preferred:
-ubuntu:~$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec
‘x-terminal-emulator’Edit: I just changed it to xterm and was about to say I’m happy with that. but It’s hard to copy and paste things to xterm
Last edited by philip10; April 12th, 2015 at 01:45 AM.
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
Try my favorite: the Xfce terminal. Copy-paste is easy, lot of customizing options.
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
I installed and opened xfce terminal
sudo apt-get install xfce4-terminalxfce4-terminal
Failed to connect to session manager: Failed to connect to the session manager: SESSION_MANAGER environment variable not definedecho $SESSION_MANAGER
<blankline>xfce4-terminal still opens up but it suffers from the same problems as x-terminal-emulator
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
Hi philip10.
Could you open a terminal run these commands, and post back the results (you can copy/paste the text)?
Code:
ls ~/.bash_logout ~/.bashrc ~/.profile diff /etc/skel/.bashrc ~/.bashrc diff /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile
Regards.
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
ls ~/.bash_logout ~/.bashrc ~/.profile
Code:
/home/philip/.bash_logout /home/philip/.bashrc /home/philip/.profile
diff /etc/skel/.bashrc ~/.bashrc
diff /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
Ok I have almost figured this out.
Code:
sudo apt-get install rxvt-unicode export TERM=rxvt-unicode
From there on everything works perfectly. My only problem now is that i have to set TERM all the time. How can i set it permanently to rxvt-unicode using either gnome-terminal or xfce4-terminal? … or any other terminal that supports copy n paste
Last edited by philip10; April 29th, 2015 at 11:23 AM.
-
Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
Ok completely figured it out now.
Code:
sudo apt-get install rxvt-unicode nano ~/.bashrc export TERM=rxvt-unicode
Now you should be able to run x-terminal-emulator or gnome-terminal-emulator and everything should work fine.
I’m not sure if this is just me but if you press ctrl+alt+T and are confronted with the wrong terminal, just open system settings -> keyboard -> shortcuts -> create a custom shortcut with your preferred terminal on ctrl+alt+t. This will override the system shortcut.
Last edited by philip10; May 26th, 2015 at 10:04 AM.
Error opening terminal: xterm.
