SuSE Support Database
Title: Color problems under X

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Color problems under X
Symptom:
- The application announces at the start:
Cannot allocate colormap entry
- Colors change depending on which application is focused
Cause:
There are no more free color cells in the X server color palette.
The program just started cannot use any new colors. The X server color
depth is not sufficient.
The X server can be operated with several different color depths:
- 8 bit = 256 colors
- 16 bit = 65536 colors
- 24 bit = 16777216 colors
depending on the capabilities of the hardware and amount of video
memory. Some chipsets only support 32 bit access to their video
memory at 24 bit color depth resulting in some unused memory.
The default configuration works with a color palette (colormap) that
contains 256 different color cells. If all of them are already used
and an application requests further colors, this requests is denied
by the Xserver with above message.
Specific programs react differently to the color shortage:
- The application renounces to display any of the colors and
switches to black and white mode
- The application creates its own color palette. It is installed
for the time the application holds the focus of input.
The colors of all other applications are then displayed in
´wrong´ colors. This isn't an error, but an intended behaviour.
Solution:
Change the X server color depth as it is described in the article
http://www.suse.de/Support/sdb/maddin_bpp.html.
Hint:
- The small icons which are integrated into the fvwm2 menu need
many colors; delete the package
3dpixms
.
From S.u.S.E. Linux 4.4 on you can set the variable
SUSEWM_XPM="no"
in the file /etc/rc.config
,
which has the same effect. Please don´t forget to call
SuSEconfig
afterwards.
- Particularly
arena
is infamous for changing
the colorpalette.
- Some programmes can´t work with a 16 bit color depth, either they
don´t start at all or claim to use a monochrome display.
- OpenWindows: the olvwm works currently only with 8 Bit color depth,
i.e. all colors from the window manager are black/white; nevertheless the
applications under it work correctly. Meanwhile, however, there is a
patch for it.

See also:

Keywords: COLORS, X SERVER, COLORMAP, COLOR DEPTH, ARENA, CANNOT ALLOCATE COLORMAP, OLVWM, OPENWIN

Feedback welcome: Send Mail to kfr@suse.de (Please give the following subject: SDB-colormap
)

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SDB-colormap, Copyright SuSE GmbH, Nuremberg, Germany
- Version: 23. Jul 1996
SuSE GmbH - Last generated: 07. Oct 1999 16:37:44
by maddin
with sdb_gen 1.00.0