Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 54379
Cannot allocate flashing colours from the display
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:37:30 EDT
Description of Problem: When I connet to HP-UX (via telnet or SHH) and try to open GUI I can't get flashing symbols to flash. I am using 8-bit colours. On RH 7.0 there is NO problem. I have tested different types of machines (i815-chipset, TNT2-chipset) without help. Why colours flash when I use RH7.0 but not when I use RH7.1 ??? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How Reproducible: Every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1.telnet hp-ux 2.setenv DISPLAY <myip:0> 3.wakeupmx guimanmx & Actual Results: Warning dialog appears: Unable to allocate flashing colours from the display. No flashing symbols will be displayed on this session. Then I clik OK and guiman open but no flashing colours! Expected Results: Colours should flash. Additional Information: I use KDE. Colours won't flash if I use GNOME (RH7.0 and RH7.1) (and thats why we use KDE. KDE is ok.) I have even installed kernel 2.4.9 and XFree 4.10, without help. This problem makes me grazy!
Use a 16 or 24 bit depth. In 256 color mode, there are a fixed number of colors available. I'm betting your old setup used more than 8 bit depth, and your existing one uses 8 bit. Am I way off base? Either way, attach both your X server log, and your config file using the link below.
Created attachment 34701 [details] tar includes 4 files. XFreelogs and XF86configs
We MUST use 256 colors on RH 7.0. If we use any other color depth (16,24) colours won`t flash. We use KDE because if we use GNOME colours won`t flash.
There is same problem when using RedHat 7.2
Ok, then I'm not clear at all on what it is you are reporting as a problem. There is no such thing as "flashing colors", in the sense that XFree86 uses color. There are different types of "visuals" used in X. There 8 bit depth uses a pseudocolor visual. This is a paletted video mode, with 256 color slots available. Applications must share these slots and/or compete with each other to use the available colors. If the running applications require more color slots (palette entries) than what is currently free, then each application will use its own private colormap. As you switch between applications that are using their own colormaps, the foreground application will acquire the palette and look normal, and the background and other apps will have random psychodelic color patters as their windows get translated to the new colormap. This can give the appearance of flashing weirdo looking colors as you move your mouse around the desktop and it changes focus. It is not a bug, but is a hardware limitation of 8bit pseudocolor. Switching to a 16 or higher bit depth, gets rid of the pseudocolor limitations, and also the associated flashing that goes along with it. The only other "flashing" anything that I can think of, is the flashing text attribute used in terminal emulation software using ANSI/VT100, etc. If this is in fact what you are talking about, then this is either a misconfiguration of your terminal software, or the application running in the term. Either way, it very much is not an XFree86 bug, as XFree86 doesn't have anything to do with high level stuff like that.