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What do I do if I run out of colors?

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Q5. I've run out of colors. What to do?
A message like
  ** XAllocColorCells fails for 75 colors
  ** try the -ncolor option to reduce # of colors
when you try to start AFNI means that the program can't allocate enough color cells from the 8 bit PseudoColor colormap. Reasons this might occur are:
  • You are running some other big color hog, such as Netscape or other imaging program.
  • You are using a window manager (such as CDE) that uses a lot of colors for fancy decorations.
Possible solutions are to
  1. Kill the color hog(s) so you can run AFNI first; and/or
  2. Setup the window manager to use less colors; and/or
  3. Run AFNI with the "-install" command line option; and/or
  4. Switch your X11 setup to be 24 bit TrueColor or 12 bit PseudoColor.
    The latter option is only possible on SGI systems, as far as I know. On our IRIX 6.2 systems, the file /var/X11/xdm/Xservers is the place where you can set the SGI X11 server to start up in 12 bit mode, if that is supported on your machine (I don't think it is supported on the Indy). I have set this file to be
      :0 secure /usr/bin/X11/X -bs -nobitscale -c -pseudomap 4sight \
        -solidroot sgilightblue -cursorFG red -cursorBG white -depth 12
    
    This is all one line. I have just added the option "-depth 12" to the default setup shipped by SGI. If you try this, be sure to save a copy of the original file, in case it doesn't work. After you change /var/X11/xdm/Xservers, you will have to reboot the system (or otherwise force the X11 server to restart).

    If you want to change the SGI X11 server to start in 24 bit TrueColor mode, instead of adding "-depth 12" to the command line above, add "-class TrueColor -depth 24".

  5. If you are using Linux, need to reconfigure your X11 server and are using XFree86, this can be done with the program xf86config, or with some programs that come with various Linux distributions (e.g., Xconfigurator from RedHat).

This FAQ applies to: Any version.

Created by Robert Cox
Last modified 2005-07-31 10:18
 

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