Gtk WARNING: cannot open display

[sblionel]

I have a Pi 3B+ and added a Lebula touchscreen monitor, connected with HDMI, for use with Octodash. When I try to start octodash I get this:

Fontconfig warning: "etc/fonts/fonts.conf", line 100: unknown element "blank"
(octodash:1000): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display

(The Fontconfig warning can be ignored, as I have read elsewhere.,)

I have gone through the troubleshooting tips (including export DISPLAY=:0), and as many closed issues here as seemed vaguely relevant, but nothing helps. I updated Raspbian, made sure xinit was installed, reinstalled Octodash - nothing changed.

If I run ratpoison, it tells me no display. I am not a Linux expert, but I can stumble my way around. The display works fine as a console. Suggestions welcomed!

[sblionel]

I got it working... I had to first type startx. Then when the X desktop opened, I had to select Run and type octodash. How do I get these to run automatically?

[UnchartedBull]

Hi! Sorry for my late reply.

Have you enabled automatic login?

You could also try adding that startx line to your ~/.xinitrc.

[sblionel]

Yes, automatic login is enabled and that works. I would rather not have to do startx, as that seems to be overloading the Pi (in that Octodash keeps popping up modal dialogs telling me it can't reach the server, which is the same Pi.) ratpoison is supposed to do the job, but it too tells me "cannot open display".

[UnchartedBull]

What is the error message if you execute:

export DISPLAY=:0 and xinit after that? Could you also make sure, that your display is display 0 and not another number?

[sblionel]

As best as I can tell, the display is 0.

xinit produces a bunch of messages, ending in:
modprobe: FATAL: Module g2d_23 not found in directory /lib/modules/4.19.66-v7+
xinit: Unable to run program "xterm": No such file or directory
...
xinit: connection to X server lost

A screenshot of this is here.
The Xorg.0.log is here.

(On searching, the g2d_23 message can be ignored.)

[sblionel]

Here's something interesting.

I created a file .xinitrc in the pi home folder, put in:
octodash

From an ssh session, I did:
export DISPLAY=:0
xinit

and Octodash starts on the LCD display!

So now I edit .profile to add those commands and reboot. It works!

[UnchartedBull]

Great! Thanks for the feedback! Closing this here.