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Xorg warning message

April 14, 2009 — BarryK
When I built "tpup" (T2 build), starting any X application in a terminal spitted out this many times, also in /tmp/xerrs.log:

Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".

I was alarmed, thought there was something wrong with the build, that I had left something out.

Now I have done the "upup" (Ubuntu Jaunty) build and get the same message. Oh dear. However, a quick google reveals that it is only a warning. Heaps of reports about this message, lots of creative speculation about what it is, but the Arch guys have determined the cause of the problem:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=65403

However, it isn't satisfactory. A warning-only it may be, but it is going to alarm users when it fills up /tmp/xerrs.log and appears in a terminal. However, I don't know any way to hide just that one message.

One of the links off the above URL has a response from an Xorg developer "Peter" on the Xorg mailing list:

On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 07:35:10AM -0700, Yan Seiner wrote:
> >> Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".

> (Unless I don't know enough to know better. Should I be concerned about
> this?)

No, and I've been meaning to silence this warning anyway.


My T2 build is from very recent Xorg source (April 4), still has this message. But then I realised that in upup I was running Xvesa, so changed over to Xorg and the message went away. This indicates that the Debian/Ubuntu developers have patched the source to silence that warning, or have upgraded to an Xorg version that supports that extension. However, Xvesa doesn't, and is never likely to, unless someone decides to maintain it again.

I am not sure of the exact sequence, but I think that when Xorg split off from Xfree86, they decided to dump Xvesa. Xvesa was then maintained separately by some people, but then Xorg agreed to merge it back -- after that, the person in charge of maintaining it at Xorg did not. Sad situation.

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