I can not run X applications from a root konsole (kde).

1. DISPLAY env var is not defined.
2. No authorization.

I could turn around this by:
1. Defining DISPLAY=:0 (for :0 vt)
2. xauth merge /home/<normal_user>/.Xauthority

Is there a better way?
I could put "xauth merge /home/<normal_user>/.Xauthority"
in .bashrc. But what about DISPLAY?

Thanks for any help

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 19:16:48 +0000, Paulo da Silva wrote:

> I can not run X applications from a root konsole (kde).
>
> 1. DISPLAY env var is not defined.
> 2. No authorization.
>
> I could turn around this by:
> 1. Defining DISPLAY=:0 (for :0 vt)
> 2. xauth merge /home/<normal_user>/.Xauthority
>
> Is there a better way?
> I could put "xauth merge /home/<normal_user>/.Xauthority" in .bashrc. But
> what about DISPLAY?
>
> Thanks for any help

You should run X applications as root as little as possible, and the extra
work required to get X apps to run as root is a good discouragement of the
practice.

You could set the DISPLAY variable in .bashrc as well as do the xauth
merge, but I would put those command into a separate script.

Typically, I don't bother with the xauth stuff; instead I do this:

useraccount$ xhost +local:
root# export DISPLAY=:0.0

The command "xhost +local:" allows any programs on your machine to contact
the X server.

I haven't created a script to do this. I just type the commands into the
terminal window because it isn't often that I run X apps as root.