Oracle runInstaller DISPLAY error on SUSE EL 10 SP4

So the other day I was installing Oracle 11g R2 Client on SUSE Enterprise linux 10 SP4 that I got the following error:

oracle@devsuse1:/tmp/newclient/client> ./runInstaller
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking Temp space: must be greater than 120 MB.   Actual 72192 MB    Passed
Checking swap space: must be greater than 150 MB.   Actual 2055 MB    Passed
Checking monitor: must be configured to display at least 256 colors
    >>> Could not execute auto check for display colors using command /usr/X11R6/bin/xdpyinfo. Check if the DISPLAY variable is set.    Failed <<<<

So after googling around the following seems to work for me:

I launched a new terminal window and did the following:


anyuser@devsuse1:~> su - root
Password:
devsuse1:~ # xhost +
access control disabled, clients can connect from any host
devsuse1:~ # su - oracle
oracle@devsuse1:~> export DISPLAY=:0.0
oracle@devsuse1:~> cd /tmp/client
oracle@devsuse1:/tmp/client> ./runInstaller
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking Temp space: must be greater than 120 MB.   Actual 73549 MB    Passed
Checking swap space: must be greater than 150 MB.   Actual 2055 MB    Passed
Checking monitor: must be configured to display at least 256 colors.    Actual 16777216    Passed
Preparing to launch Oracle Universal Installer from /tmp/OraInstall2012-09-16_05-49-58PM. Please wait ...oracle@devsuse1:/tmp/client>

After that the Oracle UI launched successfully and I was able to proceed.


On Solaris 10 Sparc the following seems to work like this for me:

I was logging into the Sun Box using the VNC Viewer Free Edition, but every I tried to  launch the runInstaller.sh as the oracle user I would the the same error as before. So I connected to the Sun Box using the root user... launched the terminal as root

# /usr/openwin/bin/xclock (to check if xclock windows launches which it did)
# /usr/openwin/bin/xhost +
access control disabled, client can connect from any host
# su - oracle
$ cd /tmp/database
$./runInstaller

after this the OUI launched successfully for the oracle user.