Xlib: extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":1" Atom Ubuntu

Question

I have an Amazon EC2 instance that runs Ubuntu 16.04 server. I installed atom and for some reason I am not able to start Atom. Everytime I start atom with the command line I see the following

Xlib:  extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":1".

I used vnc to setup ubuntu desktop and I am using vncviewer to access the desktop and start atom.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong. My vncconfig file looks like this

#!/bin/sh

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
# unset SESSION_MANAGER
# exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

gnome-session &
gnome-panel &
gnome-settings-daemon &
metacity &
nautilus &
gnome-terminal &
[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
x-terminal-emulator -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
x-window-manager &

Asdic

Answer 1

This is good in general if you use headless VM;

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
cp libxcb.so.1 libxcb.so.1.bak
sudo sed -i 's/BIG-REQUESTS/_IG-REQUESTS/' libxcb.so.1

It will fix all apps with same error

Reason:

Quoting from this link https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/4360#issuecomment-189942757 :

I was seeing the same error message and debugged it down to an X extension "BIG-REQUESTS". You can use xtrace to trace all the X traffic and I saw an 8MB message before it crashed. I first disabled all extensions with (xtrace -e ) and that worked. My final hack was to copy libxcb.so.1 into /usr/share/atom, open up in editor, and change 'BIG-REQUESTS' to '_IG-REQUESTS'. I figure when the client library asks if this extension is supported it will reply no and no more big messages. hope this helps

Luteolin

would you be able to explain what these commands do? It does a find/replace to swap "BIG-REQUESTS" for "_IG-REQUESTS", but what does that mean? And what is the function of libxcb.so.1? – Insignificance

Patching in binaries without any explanation whatsoever is bad. – Relaxation

First test if this is even a problem by running command strings /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 | grep REQUEST. – Leopoldine

Works like a charm for VS Code 1.15 on raspbian. – Ld

Check if this file is a symbolic link in your system. On Debian 16, this fix caused a later complaint during do-release-upgrade: /sbin/ldconfig.real: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 is not a symbolic link – Divebomb

Answer 2

I still get the error in command prompt but I am able to start atom

Thanks to this guy https://www.zhukun.net/archives/8070

This is what I did

sudo cp /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 /opt/atom/

sudo sed -i 's/BIG-REQUESTS/_IG-REQUESTS/' libxcb.so.1

and then

cd /opt/atom
./atom

The output of this being

Xlib:  extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":1".
Xlib:  extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":1".
Xlib:  extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":1".
bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash: no job control in this shell

But Atom did start as expected!! This is what I wanted.

Asdic

Worked for me as well ! Thanks – Isosteric