Error: Can't open display:

enter image description here

I am working my way through 'The linux command line' (http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php) . Since I don't have a local linux environment and I have to work in windows , I am telnetting into an Ubuntu 14.4 LTS instance on EC2 , with putty. On page 114 , when I run the xlogo command I get:

ubuntu@ip-172-31-22-65:~$ xlogo
Error: Can't open display:

How can I get this working?

Solution

xlogo will try to access the current Xserver to display a logo. If you're telneting to a box, you will not have an X server available, which is what that "can't open display" message is saying. It's trying to look at your DISPLAY environment variable to use that to show the logo on, but you don't have a display to use, and thus have nothing in your DISPLAY variable.

You will need access to an X server somewhere to do that step. One option would be to install cygwin on your Windows machine. Then you wouldn't need the remote linux box for most steps I imagine, because you could just use your local cygwin environment. Even if you want to use the remote box still, if you use cygwin and launch an xterm with it, you could ssh -X <host> and that will export your DISPLAY to that remote machine so it can display back on your windows machine.