Re: [gentoo-user] Re: X programs as root

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 8:37 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>wrote:

> Apparently, though unproven, at 15:03 on Sunday 17 October 2010, Nikos
> Chantziaras did opine thusly:
>
> > On 10/17/2010 04:00 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > > On 09/22/2010 09:48 PM, Andrey Vul wrote:
> > >> When I launch X programs via sudo, I get the following:
> > >>
> > >> $sudo gui-admin
> > >> No protocol specified
> > >> gui-admin: cannot connect to X server :0
> > >>
> > >> ( Assume gui-admin is an X program )
> > >>
> > >> But (gk|kde)su(do)? works. This is somewhat confusing.
> > >
> > > I just discovered something. Keeping HOME is not really recommended,
> > > because the programs that run as root will then use your user's
> > > configuration files and sometimes will set 'root' as their owner. As
> you
> > > can imagine, this is not a good thing.
> > >
> > > It seems what X programs really need is the .Xauthority file of the
> > > current X session. All you have to do is add this line to your
> ~/.bashrc:
> > >
> > > export XAUTHORITY="$HOME/.Xauthority"
> > >
> > > Then you don't have to configure sudoers to keep the HOME env var.
> >
> > (I have the tendency to press the "Send" button too soon...)
> >
> > Setting XAUTHORITY in the user's .bashrc also means that you don't have
> > to modify /etc/sudoers *in any way*, not even DISPLAY needs to be kept.
> >   Setting XAUTHORITY is *all* what is needed.
>
>
> I owe you a beer :-)
>
> One little export and this annoying thingy has now gone away:
>
> $ sudo vi /etc/fstab
> Password:
> No protocol specified
>
>
> You have NO IDEA how long that has annoyed me and how long I've been
> searching
> for a solution. Make that two beers!
>
> I'm a bit surprised, but this fix actually does work, even without any
special arrangement to
env_keep XAUTHORITY.  But I still don't like it any better than my own
solution

    echo -n ".mybashrc: "
    xhost +root@localhost

which I place in my .mybashrc, where I keep all of my .bashrc
customizations.  My way, it can
remind me what's going on, and seems more direct.  It also works if I "su"
to root.  As an old-timer on Unix, I often forget sudo.  I don't like it
much anyway because it won't get me into root if something goes wrong in
bootup: with this in mind, I need a root PW anyway, until that bottleneck
gets fixed.

The above form is actually only used in a debugging mode I've defined, and
is silent otherwise.

++ kevin

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD