From: Bob Rozumalski Greetings all; From time to time I get a question pertaining to color allocation errors when running GEMPAK/NAWIPS/NTL programs under EXCEED, LINUX, or HPUX. These are all very common problems that are easily corrected. In this treatise, I hope to clear up any confusion and provide the information needed to rectify problems that you may be having. Here are two common error messages that you may have seen: ERROR #1 - The evil "integer parameter out of range" error roz@kielbasa-> ntl X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation) Major opcode of failed request: 86 (X_AllocColorCells) Value in failed request: 0x0 Serial number of failed request: 351 Current serial number in output stream: 351 ERROR #2 - The pesky, "not enough colors" problem roz@kielbasa-> ntl graphic, satellite, radar -- 33 128 16 Request total # of colors = 177 Current available system colors = 158 Both errors are related to the number of colors that you have available on your LOCAL MACHINE and NOT the machine that is running the program. In many cases these may be the same machine, such as when you are sitting down in front of the SAC, but not always. For example, if you are using EXCEED import your SAC display to your PC, then the problem is with your PC and not the SAC. ERROR #1 is due to a problem with your LOCAL SYSTEM configuration, while ERROR #2 is due to a USER windows configuration problems. Troubleshooting ERROR #1 First, if you are running GNOME windows manager, switch to KDE. NAWIPS will not run under GNOME. This error may be generated because your LOCAL machine is running in 24-bit, TrueColor mode. Like it or not, GEMPAK/NAWIPS/NTL can only run under 8-bit PseudoColor mode so you will have to modify your SYSTEM windows configuration to put your LOCAL machine in 8-bit mode. This is a common error under LINUX and when using EXCEED. You can see that the you are in TrueColor mode by running the "xdpyinfo" command and look at the default visual information: roz@kielbasa-> xdpyinfo (NOTE: STUFF DELETED) name of display: mindy.comet.ucar.edu:0.0 version number: 11.0 vendor string: The XFree86 Project, Inc default screen number: 0 number of screens: 1 screen #0: default visual id: 0x22 visual: visual id: 0x22 class: TrueColor <--- NOTE TrueColor (BAD) depth: 24 planes <--- NOTE 24-bit (BAD) available colormap entries: 256 per subfield red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff significant bits in color specification: 8 bits For EXCEED users, the solution is to simply set your PC to 256 colors. For LINUX users, you will have to reconfigure your X server. This does NOT require a complete installation of your OS, but is not as elegant as the EXCEED solution. You may either: 1) Run XF86Setup or Xconfigurator as root. You will need your graphics card and monitor info that you used when installing the OS. When it prompt you to select the colors vs resolution, make sure you choose values ONLY in the 8-bit (256) color listing. or 2) Hack the X configuration file. On my RH LINUX 6.0 machine that file is /etc/X11/XF86Config. The very bottom of the file is where you define the colors. % cd /etc/X11/ % cp XF86Config XF86Config.orig edit the XF86Config file: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - # ********************************************************************** # Screen sections # ********************************************************************** # The Colour SVGA server Section "Screen" Driver "svga" Device "Generic VGA" #Device "TVP4020 Permedia 2" Monitor "Dell Ultrascan 21FS" Subsection "Display" Depth 24 <-- Change to 8 #Modes "1280x1024" ViewPort 0 0 EndSubsection EndSection # The accelerated servers (S3, Mach32, Mach8, 8514, P9000, AGX, W32, Mach64 # I128, and S3V) Section "Screen" Driver "accel" Device "TVP4020 Permedia 2" Monitor "Dell Ultrascan 21FS" Subsection "Display" Depth 24 <-- Change to 8 Modes "1280x1024" ViewPort 0 0 EndSubsection EndSection -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Finally, restart your Xserver or reboot the machine. Troubleshooting ERROR #2 Error #2 is the results of not having enough colors available in your local windows environment. Remember, you only start out with 256 and your environment requires colors. Ntl must have 177 colors available in order to start running, otherwise you will get the error listed above: graphic, satellite, radar -- 33 128 16 Request total # of colors = 177 Current available system colors = 158 Note that of the 256 original colors, there are only 158 remaining. All those colors were taken up by your "window treatments" and/or other processes, such as netscape. To rectify the error above, you have 2 choices: 1) kill any other color intensive processes or reduce the amount of colors require by your windows or 2) Start NTL with FEWER that the 177 required colors. Solution #2 is easy. Ntl will actually take arguments ( -g, -s, -r) that will allow you to request fewer than the default number of colors, which is 33 for GARP (Graphics), 128 for satellite, and 16 for radar. From the error message above, I need to request 19 fewer colors since all I have available is 158. If you know that you are not going to look at radar, you could start ntl as: % ntl -r 0 -s 3 Here, I will be starting ntl with 0 radar colors and 3 satellite colors. Solution #1 requires that you kill all graphic intensive processes, such as netscape, until AFTER ntl is running. Afterwards, you may start netscape with the "-install" option, witch will initial the color map swapping between processes: % netscape -install If that doesn't work then you will have to reduce the amount of colors used by your windows. On your HP, click on the style manager icon along the bottom of your screen: style manager --> Color --> Number of colors --> Most for Applications When you get out, you will have to log out and log back in for the changes to take effect. On LINUX Systems, this avenue depends on which of the many windows managers you are running. I hope this helps to clear some of the confusion. Bob