checking for X... no configure: error: X11 required on Unix platform?

jaco29

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Hi guys,

Note:
System = OpenSuse Leap.

After trying to install the application workrave I encouter the following error:

checking for X... no
configure: error: X11 required on Unix platform

Furthermore after doing "zypper update" I get now get the following information:

Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

The following 157 package updates will NOT be installed:
gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-bad-lang iceauth k3b k3b-lang
libavcodec57 libavdevice57 libavfilter6 libavformat57 libavresample3
libavutil55 libdrm2 libdrm_amdgpu1 libdrm_intel1 libdrm_nouveau2
libdrm_radeon1 libepoxy0 libevdev2 libFLAC++6 libFLAC8 libfontenc1
libgbm1 libGLU1 libgstadaptivedemux-1_0-0 libgstbadaudio-1_0-0
libgstbadbase-1_0-0 libgstbadvideo-1_0-0 libgstbasecamerabinsrc-1_0-0
libgstcodecparsers-1_0-0 libgstgl-1_0-0 libgstmpegts-1_0-0
libgstphotography-1_0-0 libgsturidownloader-1_0-0 libgstwayland-1_0-0
libICE6 libmjpegutils-2_0-0 libmtdev1 libpciaccess0 libpixman-1-0
libpostproc54 libquicktime0 libSM6 libsox3 libswresample2 libswscale4
libva1 libva-drm1 libva-egl1 libva-glx1 libva-x11-1 libvdpau1 libX11-6
libX11-data libX11-devel libX11-xcb1 libXau6 libXaw7 libxcb1
libxcb-composite0 libxcb-cursor0 libxcb-damage0 libxcb-devel
libxcb-dpms0 libxcb-dri2-0 libxcb-dri3-0 libxcb-glx0 libxcb-icccm4
libxcb-image0 libxcb-keysyms1 libxcb-present0 libxcb-randr0
libxcb-record0 libxcb-render0 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-res0
libxcb-screensaver0 libxcb-shape0 libxcb-shm0 libxcb-sync1 libxcb-util1
libxcb-xf86dri0 libxcb-xfixes0 libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xkb1
libxcb-xtest0 libxcb-xv0 libxcb-xvmc0 libXcomposite1 libXcursor1
libXdamage1 libXdmcp6 libXext6 libXfixes3 libXfont1 libXfontcache1
libXft2 libXi6 libXinerama1 libxkbfile1 libXmu6 libXmuu1 libXpm4
libXrandr2 libXrandr-devel libXrender1 libXrender-devel libXRes1
libxshmfence1 libXss1 libXt6 libXtst6 libXv1 libXvnc1 libXxf86misc1
libXxf86vm1 luit Mesa Mesa-libEGL1 Mesa-libGL1 Mesa-libglapi0
Mesa-libGLESv2-2 Mesa-libva mjpegtools mkfontdir mkfontscale rgb s2tc
s2tc-32bit sessreg setxkbmap sox tigervnc xauth xbitmaps xconsole xdm
xdm-xsession xhost xinit xkbcomp xkeyboard-config xkeyboard-config-lang
xmessage xmodmap xorg-x11-driver-input xorg-x11-driver-video
xorg-x11-essentials xorg-x11-fonts xorg-x11-fonts-core
xorg-x11-libX11-ccache xorg-x11-server xorg-x11-Xvnc xprop xrandr xrdb
xset xsetroot

Nothing to do.

Any help in how to resolve these issues is much appreciated. Thanks.
 


@jaco29 :

Hi and welcome to linux.org :)

Your link to workrave's site reveals a tarball to be downloaded, but are you aware that you can get it from here?

https://software.opensuse.org/package/workrave
https://software.opensuse.org/package/workrave
With regard to your uninstalled packages, what version of Leap are you using, eg 42.2 , 42.3 &c?

I don't (currently) run OpenSUSE, but I run Gecko (which is based on it) Tumbleweeds, with the MATE DE.

You could try

Code:
# zypper dup

... where "dup" is like distribution-upgrade, but it may well upgrade you to a newer version of Leap. If you don't want that, don't try it.

Code:
man zypper

might be of use.

There is a phenomenon called "Vendor stickiness" which can apply to OpenSUSE and derivatives, whereby zypper may find more updated versions of software, but not apply them if it does not accept the source of the software. I do not know if that is the case with workrave and whether the issues are related, at this point.

Both zypper and YaST, your package manager, as based on software known as ZYpp, if that helps.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Jaco - Exactly how are you trying to install Workrave?

I could be wrong, but from the configure error that you posted, it looks like you are trying to build and install it from source.

If so, then as Wiz has mentioned - Workrave should be available in the repos for Suse Leap.
Perhaps you will have more luck installing it from the repos instead. Suse's package management systems should be able to deal with installing any missing dependencies.

Also I'm not familiar with any of the current Suse distros. I haven't tried Suse for many years. But the initial configure error says that you don't have X11 installed. Which to me implies that you either:

A. Don't have any desktop environments installed
or
B. Your desktop is running on something like wayland instead of X11?

I seem to recall seeing something about Gnome switching to use Wayland by default instead of X11 for one of it's recent releases... So I guess that might explain the lack of X11. But it definitely looks like Workrave requires X11 to be installed and you don't seem to have it.

Again, Wayland isn't something I've messed around with, I've only ever used X. But I'm fairly certain that it's OK to have wayland AND X11 installed on the same machine.

But once you have Workrave and X11 installed, I'm not sure whether you'd be able to use it under a desktop/wayland session. You might have to set up and log into a desktop session on X to be able to use it. Or you might have to set up some kind of hybrid X/wayland desktop session.... But I guess that's up to you to find out! :/

Someone else here might be able to help more, but that's all I've got off the top of my head. Hope it is of some use to you!
 
@jaco29

Regrets on the delay.

Btw the https://software.opensuse.org/package/workrave link is returning a 404 not found error.

Likewise, now, me too. However when I went into Gecko yesterday, to review, my Firefox tab was still open and showing the link as active with output. However, following a refresh of the page, I got the 404. I’ve just checked and still 404, so that is an issue with openSUSE’s website that I guess will be fixed in due course. We could report it to them, or else there are alternative sources for an .rpm if you wish to pursue them.

Harking back to your OP (original post), I would like to deal with the outputs reproduced as separate issues, but which may be linked. And then dovetail them in with your goal, of getting workrave installed. In this fashion, I can also incorporate points mooted by Jas above, of eg whether you have the Xorg Display Server on your computer, or Wayland, or both.

So I’ll call them:
  1. Display Server – which one?
  2. Updates issue with zypper and
  3. Install workrave

Display Server – which one?


Try not to confuse Display Servers with Display Managers (hard, I know).

Display Servers include the X Server from our friends at X.org, and Wayland, and there are others.

Display Managers include
  • GDM – the GNOME Display Manager
  • MDM – the (Linux) Mint Display Manager
  • KDM – the KDE Display Manager, used up to the end of the Plasma 4 series, and
  • sddm – the simple desktop display manager, used with Plasma 5 on
… and there are others.

@jaco29 if you could, at a Terminal/Konsole, type in and enter the following and report back on the output, that would be helpful -

Code:
loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID

To give you a couple of examples from my own environment:

At the moment I am in Linux Mint 18.2 ‘Sonya’ Cinnamon 64-bit. My output looks as follows:

chris@SonyaCinnamonGarage ~ $ loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID
Id=c2
User=1000
Name=chris
Timestamp=Sun 2017-09-10 14:07:08 AEST
TimestampMonotonic=47769680
VTNr=7
Seat=seat0
Display=:0
Remote=no
Service=lightdm
Desktop=cinnamon

Scope=session-c2.scope
Leader=1313
Audit=0
Type=x11
Class=user
Active=yes
State=active
IdleHint=no
IdleSinceHint=0
IdleSinceHintMonotonic=0

Now, a few minutes later, I am on Gecko Rolling MATE, based on OpenSUSE Tumbleweeds, and thus a lot closer to being similar to your own environment.

This time, the output from the same command is as follows:

chris@GeckoRollingMATE-Garage:~> loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID
Id=2
User=2001
Name=chris
Timestamp=Sun 2017-09-10 15:49:23 AEST
TimestampMonotonic=44815010
VTNr=7
Seat=seat0
Display=:0
Remote=no
Service=lightdm
Desktop=mate

Scope=session-2.scope
Leader=1194
Audit=2
Type=x11
Class=user
Active=yes
State=active
IdleHint=no
IdleSinceHint=0
IdleSinceHintMonotonic=0
LockedHint=no

If we just want to find which Display Server we are on, eg X11 or Wayland, we can type and enter

Code:
echo $XDG_SESSION_ID

But I would like to see output for the three (3) categories highlighted in my examples.

Once we establish your own circumstances, we can see if you might need to install the X Server, perhaps again (& there we will isolate its install of same from the rest of your zypper output).

And if both Wayland and X co-exist on your setup, we may be able to tweak a file (likely called something like custom.conf) to change a line that might appear as

#WaylandEnable=false

to

WaylandEnable=false

... which would then load X by default after a reboot.

But I won't get ahead of myself.

Cheers

Wizard
 
As an addendum to my previous post:

I just realised a much more obvious scenario from your output from configure:
You might simply be missing some of the development libraries that are required to build workrave from source.

The error message about X might just be implying that you don't have the headers/libraries installed for X11
e.g. libx11-devel (or whatever the dev package is called in rpm-land).

And if you are missing that - you might also be missing other build-dependencies too. In which case, it would be best to check the documentation in the workrave source-code, or on their website to see if there is a list of required development libraries and ensure that you have them all installed.

I haven't used any rpm based systems for many years, but something like this might just do the trick:
Code:
zypper si -d workrave
That should download and install the build dependencies for the workrave package in the repos. Then assuming that none of the pre-requisites have changed in the version you have downloaded the source-code for - you should be able to configure, build and install the program from source!

Otherwise, you could try:
Code:
zypper si workrave
Which would download the source code for the version in the repo AND the build-dependencies - allowing you to build the repo's version of workrave from source....
 
Last edited:
@Rob

Thanks for that update Rob and 6 hours later, it still works for me here in Oz.

That page Rob has linked to features an opportunity to one-click install, but for Leap 42.1 it is not supported.

I asked a week ago

Code:
With regard to your uninstalled packages, what version of Leap are you using, eg 42.2 , 42.3 &c?

... and that could still have an impact here.

@JasKinasis

Although workrave is in the Repos for many Linux Distros (including the Debian-based, I have just installed it on one of my Linux Mints), it is not in the Repos for my Gecko Linux Tumbleweed, which draws on OpenSUSE's Repos.

I have downloaded and burned to stick Leap 42.2, but I could really use the knowledge of what the OP is using before I install.

Cheers all

Wizard
 

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