xwd: unable to open display ' '

Question

xwd: unable to open display ' '

Closed this issue 7 years ago · 6 comments

I have make a terminal record by ttyrec myrecord and it can be played with ttyplay myrecord, but when I try to convert it to a gif by the command ttygif myrecord, it occurs a problem as following:

xwd:  unable to open display ''
failed to execute: xwd -id 23068679 -out /tmp/ttygif.o9dmWc/0.xwd

I have already executed export WINDOWID=23068679 before converting, and Installed those package with

yum install imagemagick gcc x11-apps xdotool

My environment is:

OS: CentOS release 6.8 (Final)
Arch: x86_64
ttygif: 1.4.0

Hope to reply, thanks ! 🙏

Answer 1 · 2017-04-10T14:22:45.000Z

What happens when you run xwd directly with no parameters?

Answer 2 · 2017-04-12T03:13:03.000Z

I typed xwd directly, the output is:

$ xwd
xwd:  unable to open display ''

Answer 3 · 2017-04-12T14:36:32.000Z

Are you trying to do this over ssh?

Answer 4 · 2017-04-13T02:27:27.000Z

I'm confused. I did this through a ssh connection to reach my real server, all I did is on the real server. 😕

Answer 5 · 2017-04-13T02:29:20.000Z

That's your issue. The machine you're running it on needs to be running a X server so it can take a screenshot of the window (with xwd).

Answer 6 · 2017-04-13T03:19:18.000Z

If the machine you're doing the ssh connection from is also Linux, you can scp the recording file to your local machine and do it from there.