"xset: unable to open display" while do-release-upgrade via ssh

[jbuthmann]

I'm doing a "do-release-upgrade" on a remote pc via ssh. This remote pc is an old laptop, which display broke and was dismounted.
Prior to this "do-release-upgrade", ubuntu natty i386 was running on it.

After downloading the packages, the message
xset: unable to open display ""
keeps repeating on the terminal output, while preparing the packages, see attachement (which is only an example of many other occurrences of this message)

I know it's barely a nuisance (as the update seems to work either way), I just wanted to let You know.

Thanks for Your work!

Greets,

Tiefflieger

[Lutz (webkontakt)]

This message may mess up your interaction forms. I solved it by just killing the loop starting the screensaver, you find it in the process list when you open another ssh session. No harm done, upgrade continues as expected

[jbuthmann (jbuthmann)]

Thanks for Your answer. Yes, no harm was done, but still this does not look like it's meant to be ;-) .
Maybe the screensaver should be disabled by default (when doing a do-release-upgrade/ when doing a do-release-upgrade via ssh/...) ?
Killing processes during dist-upgrade seems to me not that wise...

[Levi Luke (levimluke)]

Well i was doing the update without ssh and got this, i guess its my onbroad Intel graphics is not sported by xset (Funny because Xorg works just file with Flux Box which i use)

I don't know y i'm updating when i should just backup my files and settings for my new server im getting.

[Urop (urop)]

I get the same thing - but I am doing an upgrade of ubuntu server without ssh. I don't even have x installed as far as I know...

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

Is this an xorg-server bug or upgrade-manager? Bug #883618 appears to be the same problem, and still occurs on precise upgrades.

[progmachine (progmachine)]

> I solved it by just killing the loop starting the screensaver
And what process i must kill?

[Richard Hansen (rhansen)]

If you run 'ps -ef', you'll see the following shell process:

    sh -c "while true; do /usr/bin/xdg-screensaver reset; sleep 30; done"

Kill that process and the messages will stop.

Bug #883618 really does look like a duplicate of this one, but I'm not going to mark this as a duplicate because that problem was supposedly fixed for precise yet people are still reporting the problem. Maybe it's fixed for upgrades *from* precise (to quantal), not upgrades *to* precise.

[progmachine (progmachine)]

I've done upgrading to precise and there is no more bugs. I suggest to mark this bug as closed, if this bug is fixed also for people, that still use oneric or earlier release.

[Richard Hansen (rhansen)]

Yup, I did an upgrade to precise and can confirm that the bug is fixed. Closing as a duplicate.