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From: johnd@physiol.su.oz (John Dodson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: QVSS (VR260) windows wedged in Black on Black in xterm
Summary: rebuild your bin/X11 & usr/X11
Message-ID: <666@physiol.su.oz>
Date: 9 Jun 89 11:59:18 GMT
References: <12128@grebyn.COM>
Organization: Physiology Dept., Univ. of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Lines: 37

In article <12128@grebyn.COM>, karl@grebyn.COM (Karl Nyberg) writes:
> The hardware: microvax II.  
> The software: Ultrix 3.0, X11R3 (with fixes), started from xdm in
> /etc/rc.local.
> 
> The problem: yesterday a kermit session (with a lot of garbage characters
> coming in) in one of the windows wedged the window and wouldn't let go for
> nothing.  Rebooted the system from another terminal only to find that any
> xterm-related window was black background (with presumably black
> characters).
--- 
> Trying to run an xterm from the shell within emacs gives me the following
> error messages:
> 
> 	X Toolkit Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry for "White"
> 	X Toolkit Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry for "Black"
---
> 
> Other than that, I can move windows, resize them etc.  I've rebooted
> (several times), powered the system and console completely off, run fsck on
> all the file systems to no avail.  Is it a hardware problem?

No, it is not hardware.

I have searched for the actual cause for a couple of weeks now (a number
of things can cause this problem) & have yet to find it.

But, rebuilding your entire X-core to reinstall /usr/bin/X11 & /usr/lib/X11
will fix the problem.

However my next attemt was to gradually rebuild things (although there is
NO indication that anything has changed - I've tried a find on recently
modified files in those dirs to no avail) at this stage I'm stumped too
& waiting for it to recur (so I'll be forced to find the problem ;-)
By the way my hardware is the same but running 4.3bsd-tahoe.

johnd@physiol.physiol.su.oz.au