FastX Session Appears All Black

Problem

The session appears all black when launching any session (KDE, GNOME, xterm etc).  In multiple window mode, the window doesn’t appear at all.

Typical Cause

The root cause of this issue is typically a misconfiguration of the DISPLAY variable.

  1. cat /etc/hosts — make a note of the entries
  2. ifconfig -a — note your ip address

Does your hostname ip address in /etc/hosts match the ip address from ifconfig -a ?

Interim Solution

  1. Log in to the FastX Web Interface as an admin
  2. System > Sessions > Profiles > Default Profile > Session Settings
  3. Uncheck Enable X11 TCP Support
  4. Save
  5. Start a new session

Disabling X11 TCP support will make the session listen on localhost only.  This will fix the issue, but certain applications like lsf need a remote DISPLAY.  In these circumstances, these applications will fail.

Correct Solution

Configure /etc/hosts to use the right ip address of the server