sometimes i need to run a few progs as root (such as ksysv or gedit as root ::yes i know i could use vi or pico: but whenever i do a normal su -, i enter the command gedit, xine, ksysv, or whatever and i get a gtk: couldn't open display warning

how do i solve this and what is causing this? i can run gedit fine if i open a terminal as user and type in the prog name

xhost is the keyword... http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand....es/xhost1.html

sweet, i'll give that a shot

i tried xhost, but i still wasn't able to get root using the x server

i did xhost root and it told me that root was a bad host name
i tried xhost +root, same response
then i did xhost + to all all connections, but su -, and then doing a command like gedit still didn't let root connect to X

any other suggestions or has anyone else been able to get root to use graphical programs (when not logged in as root to gui)?

This is the same on most *nix's, try this.

With the user you logged in as open up a terminal and type the following: -
xhost +localhost

This allows anyone on your machine to display to you're screen so a security risk if you're on a multi user machine but probably OK on a workstation.

Then to get you're GUI displayed back, from the same command window type: -

su -
export DISPLAY=localhost:0

Then just type the name of the command you want to display back, eg.

xclock

nope, didn't work

did the xhost +localhost and export command

in fact, when i did the export command (i figured this would happen) for display, not even the user i was logged in with could open up programs (both gave me the error, gtk warning : could not open display)

fortunately, when i rebooted, things went back to normal, but still could not open anything gui related after having done su -

there has to be a way, other distros manage to do it (even though it is a security risk)

Try the complete name "family:name" when you issue the xhost command (check the man page for more details):

xhost + local:localhost

and then,

su -
DISPLAY=:0

is it DISPLAY=:0 or DISPLAY=localhost:0?

DISPLAY=:0

I'm just a n00b myself, but I know if you just use 'su' without the hyphen, you'll be able to run X stuff just fine. IIRC the manpage basically said that the hyphen makes the su login think it's running in a console instead of a terminal. Although there could be some benefit to it that I'm not aware of...

sweeeet! I cannot believe I missed something so blatantly obvious!

yes, of course, by running su without the hyphen, all I am doing is telling linux to allow the user i am currently logged on as to have superuser privileges without being logged in as su

however, su - actually logs me in as root and inside the terminal it now believes that i am running in a full superuser environment; thus it tries to connect to the x server as though it was allocated for root's use; doing su keeps the user in direct contact with the x server but allows me to access all the things only root should be able to touch

the advantage of su -, however, is that certain commands are in "sbin" folders and they are spread out around the the system; so instead of having to run say /sbin/fdisk, i can do su - and then just type fdisk
this is only useful because fdisk could have been in /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/sbin, /etc/sbin, /home/bla/hello/where/in/the/world/is/this/going/sbin and i would have had to try all those before i found where fdisk was

thx man

do a plain su to access graphical things as root in terminal