I'm running arch linux on my linode and I'm attempting to set up XServer.

Basically, what I did was

pacman -Syu xorg-server
pacman -S xorg-xinit
pacman -S xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm
pacman -S xorg-utils xorg-server-utils
startx

When I ran startx, I got an error:

Fatal server error:
no screens found

About fifteen seconds later, I got another error:

xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error

Xserver auto terminated at this point.

I'm fairly new to linux, but I understand a good amount of it. If anyone could clear up what causes these errors / how to fix them that would be greatly appreciated.

Linode instances do not have any video hardware in their virtual machine environment. It does not make sense to run an X server on a Linode. Why do you want to do this?

I'm planning on VNCing into it.

Why?

So that I can run a program that requires a window to be opened.

Sooo... instead of startx, just run vnc4server or something... it shouldf act as X11 display :1 or something siliar, and you should be able to connect to it...

_________________
rsk, providing useless advice on the Internet since 2005.

I get further errors when running a vnc program.

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = (unset),
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LANG = "en_US.utf8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

New 'X' desktop is li224-139:1

Starting applications specified in /root/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /root/.vnc/li224-139:1.log

li224-139:1.log states:

Couldn't open RGB_DB '/usr/share/X11/rgb'
02/07/11 15:17:03 Xvnc version TightVNC-1.3.10
02/07/11 15:17:03 Copyright (C) 2000-2009 TightVNC Group
02/07/11 15:17:03 Copyright (C) 1999 AT&T Laboratories Cambridge
02/07/11 15:17:03 All Rights Reserved.
02/07/11 15:17:03 See http://www.tightvnc.com/ for information on TightVNC
02/07/11 15:17:03 Desktop name 'X' (li224-139:1)
02/07/11 15:17:03 Protocol versions supported: 3.3, 3.7, 3.8, 3.7t, 3.8t
02/07/11 15:17:03 Listening for VNC connections on TCP port 5901
02/07/11 15:17:03 Listening for HTTP connections on TCP port 5801
02/07/11 15:17:03   URL http://li224-139:5801
Font directory '/usr/share/fonts/Type1/' not found - ignoring
xrdb: No such file or directory
xrdb: can't open file '/root/.Xresources'
xsetroot:  unknown color "grey"
Warning: locale not supported by C library, locale unchanged
twm:  invalid color name "black"
twm:  invalid color name "white"
twm:  invalid color name "slategrey"
twm:  invalid color name "gray85"
twm:  invalid color name "gray85"
twm:  invalid color name "gray85"
twm:  invalid color name "slategrey"
twm:  invalid color name "gray70"
twm:  invalid color name "gray85"
twm:  invalid color name "gray85"
twm:  invalid color name "gray85"

That's kinda normal, and you should be able to connect to it via VNC, to port... 5901 I think?
For the locale error, I have no idea how to build them in archlinux - I'd run 'dpkg-reconfigure locales' here.

_________________
rsk, providing useless advice on the Internet since 2005.

I am able to connect via vnc. Thank you for the help.

If you have a local X server and just need to run particular applications remotely once in awhile, don't overlook the -X option to ssh:

rtucker@witte:~$ ssh -X framboise
...
rtucker@framboise:~$ xterm
(xterm appears!)

It requires the ssh session stay up, and it is noticeably slow, but it sure beats deploying an entire GUI stack just to do one thing.

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