Hi,

following a good advise, I only log in as root when necessary, and I do so by using the command "su". Sometimes I would like to be able to open emacs with GUI as root, in order to make changes to certain files. However, this request is denied by the X server, since only user myname is allowed to access the X server when I'm logged in as myname. Nobody else uses this computer, so there are only two users: root and myname.

My question is this: is it a security liability to put "xhost +local:" into my .xsession file? This would allow me to access the X server as root too, rather than just as user myname. I've been reading about xhost being unsecure, but I still don't understand why.

Are there better ways of accessing the X server (e.g. opening emacs or xdvi) as root?

Thanks, umk

I use xhost +local: as well as it only accepts local connections, but if you don't trust it try using sux instead of su to transfer the magic cookie, or if you're a KDE user use kdesu appname.

Thanks, I'll try sux. umk

You can add the following line to /root/.bashrc Where "name" is your username. I am quoting happytux on that one. It is what I did a long time ago to allow myself to open x programs as root, following happytux's suggestion.

Since debian tightened security on X the export XAUTHORITY still needs a xhost +local: from the user running X.
In addition to having xhost +local: in users .profile my roots .profile has export DISPLAY=:0.0

Hi!

I am doing xhost +
and I still cant connect from another machine

Knoppix is cool, i dont need to do anything on it...

But this sucks. Could anyone explain to me how it works, I cant seem to figure it out

The dox are lying & crap!