Can’t Display 256 Colors
If you’re reading this post, you most likely are trying to run the Oracle Database 11g or 12c runInstaller program, and it’s failing a critical dependency check and displaying an error like the one below. If so, choose n because if you choose y it won’t launch the Oracle Installer.
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...
Checking Temp space: must be greater than 500 MB. Actual 30824 MB Passed
Checking swap space: must be greater than 150 MB. Actual 3967 MB Passed
Checking monitor: must be configured to display at least 256 colors
>>> Could not execute auto check for display colors using command /usr/bin/xdpyinfo. Check if the DISPLAY variable is set. Failed <<<<
Some requirement checks failed. You must fulfill these requirements before
continuing with the installation,
Continue? (y/n) [n] n |
The first thing to check is whether you’ve the $TERM environment variable. It’ll be set in your env list but may not be set in your .bashrc file. You can see whether it’s set by running the following command:
echo $TERM |
It should return a value, like this:
xterm-256color |
If you didn’t get that value, use the env command to lookup the $TERM. The correct value can be found by running the env command like this:
env | grep -i term |
Add $TERM environment variable to your .bashrc file and source it after the change or reboot the user’s session:
export TERM=xterm-256color |
If it still doesn’t work, some posts ask you to run xclock but you don’t generally install the xhost clients. Those articles assumes you’ve installed the xorg-x11-apps package library. That’s more or less a choice you made when installing the Linux OS. You can check for the presence of the library with the following command as the root user:
rpm -qa xorg-x11-apps |
If the command fails to return a result from the search of Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) libraries, you haven’t installed it. You can install it as the root superuser with this syntax:
yum install -y xorg-x11-apps |
It should display the following result when successful:
Loaded plugins: langpacks Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package xorg-x11-apps.x86_64 0:7.7-6.el7 will be installed --> Processing Dependency: libXaw.so.7()(64bit) for package: xorg-x11-apps-7.7-6.el7.x86_64 --> Running transaction check ---> Package libXaw.x86_64 0:1.0.12-5.el7 will be installed --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ================================================================================= Package Arch Version Repository Size ================================================================================= Installing: xorg-x11-apps x86_64 7.7-6.el7 ol7_latest 304 k Installing for dependencies: libXaw x86_64 1.0.12-5.el7 ol7_latest 190 k Transaction Summary ================================================================================= Install 1 Package (+1 Dependent package) Total download size: 494 k Installed size: 1.2 M Downloading packages: (1/2): libXaw-1.0.12-5.el7.x86_64.rpm | 190 kB 00:00:00 (2/2): xorg-x11-apps-7.7-6.el7.x86_64.rpm | 304 kB 00:00:00 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 690 kB/s | 494 kB 00:00:00 Running transaction check Running transaction test Transaction test succeeded Running transaction Installing : libXaw-1.0.12-5.el7.x86_64 1/2 Installing : xorg-x11-apps-7.7-6.el7.x86_64 2/2 Verifying : libXaw-1.0.12-5.el7.x86_64 1/2 Verifying : xorg-x11-apps-7.7-6.el7.x86_64 2/2 Installed: xorg-x11-apps.x86_64 0:7.7-6.el7 Dependency Installed: libXaw.x86_64 0:1.0.12-5.el7 Complete! |
After installing the xorg-x11-apps library packages, you can retry running the Oracle installer. You should now see the following successful message set:
Starting Oracle Universal Installer... Checking Temp space: must be greater than 500 MB. Actual 30809 MB Passed Checking swap space: must be greater than 150 MB. Actual 3967 MB Passed Checking monitor: must be configured to display at least 256 colors. Actual 16777216 Passed Preparing to launch Oracle Universal Installer from /tmp/OraInstall2016-06-01_01-50-54AM. Please wait ... |
As always, I hope this helps my students and anybody looking for a solution to a less than explicit error message.
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