SuSE Support Database

Title: Color problems under X

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Color problems under X

Symptom:

1. The application announces at the start:

   Cannot allocate colormap entry
   

2. Colors change depending on which application is focused

Cause:

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:

1. The application renounces to display any of the colors and switches to black and white mode

2. 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:

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:

X server: configuring color depth
Configuring the screen resolution
fvwm2 and fvwm95 are slow

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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