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I just set up a fedora distribution on my computer and am slowly trying to learn how to work from the command line. I was testing R which went fine, except for some reason when I tried again I suddenly seem to be unable to draw plots. I get the error: 

> x = 1:5
> y = x^2
> plot(x,y)
No protocol specified
Error in X11(d$display, d$width, d$height, d$pointsize, d$gamma, d$colortype,  : 
  unable to start device X11cairo
In addition: Warning message:
In function (display = "", width, height, pointsize, gamma, bg,  :
  unable to open connection to X11 display ''

and when I check the capabilities I see that X11 is FALSE:

> capabilities()
No protocol specified
    jpeg      png     tiff    tcltk      X11     aqua http/ftp  sockets 
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE    FALSE    FALSE     TRUE     TRUE 
  libxml     fifo   cledit    iconv      NLS  profmem    cairo 
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE    FALSE     TRUE

Although I know nothing about whether those are connected or not it seems X11 should be on?

Everywhere I searched for this people seemed to have this problem when working over an ssh connection (I haven't yet taken a look at what that is exactly :$).

I hope someone who knows what this problem is about could be so nice to explain the problem to me and suggest a solution.

Thanks in advance from a n00b

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Before starting R can you post output of echo $DISPLAY – Karlson Feb 9 '12 at 15:48
This command yields ´:0´ – Jóhann Feb 9 '12 at 16:29
How about from R: Sys.getenv("DISPLAY") – Karlson Feb 9 '12 at 16:39
hmm, this only gives me bash: syntax error near unexpected token "DISPLAY"'` – Jóhann Feb 9 '12 at 16:44
Do this: Sys.getenv(DISPLAY) or this: Sys.getenv('DISPLAY') or Sys.getenv(c("DISPLAY")) – Karlson Feb 9 '12 at 16:51
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1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

There are many threads elsewhere related to Cairo package.

One of them mentions the change in X11 type but most of them state that R doesn't know what the display is and suggest doing:

Sys.putenv("DISPLAY"=":0.0")
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Unfortunately neither this solution, or the one mentioned in the other thread seem to fix this. :/ My package also insists on me using Sys.setenv instead of putenv.. don't know if hte new command is different? – Jóhann Feb 9 '12 at 17:07
Sys.putenv is deprecated in favor of Sys.setenv – Karlson Feb 9 '12 at 17:18
This worked the next time I tried to use this :). Must have been something strange with the last session – Jóhann Feb 14 '12 at 18:19

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