gentoo root no gnome access
 

Strange problem since changing to gentoo. My Gnome desktop is working fine and I am happy with it but if I try to run things as root such as nautilus, it is not working.

When I open a terminal, su then run nautilus, the nautilus browser opens as expected but only has user access. I can't access anything as root. No /root directory, no access to change ownership of root files etc.

If I change to ctrl/alt F1, login as root, startx -- :1, I get X up but no gnome. From here I can run nautilus and it has full root access, but there is no desktop.

I would prefer to run from a terminal and su for the odd time I need root access, but I just cant make it work!!

Any suggestions would be great.

does gksudo work instead of su?

It tries to but doesn't actually open the program.

Every time I run it, it behaves differently. Sometimes it asks for the password, then does nothing, other times, no password but still does nothing. Sometimes it wont accept my password.


I would like it to work with just su because thats the way I have always done it. And it worries me that I cant get a root desktop to work (not that I use it)!

Glad you see the harm running a root desktop! Try running 'su -' without the quotes to su to root from a terminal. This will run the applications in root's environment so Nautilus then runs with root's priviledges. You should probably only run Nautilus with the '--no-desktop' switch as well so it doesn't try to draw the desktop with a Nautilus instance running as root - that might get confusing...

Thats exactly what I am doing but nautilus will only run with user access.
eg. I cant access /root, cant modify anything outside of a user directory.

The terminal does have root access, I can access /root and modify things, but just not from nautilus.

Does this mean it is a gnome issue?

I actually use a nautilus script to open files or folders as root. Yes "su -" does work or even gksu, there's also a "privileged granting" option in system > preferences > Privilege granting.
I added the sunrise overlay in gentoo. Then emerged "gnome-extra/nautilus-actions" This adds a "open as administrator" option in the nautilus menu. Its very handy when opening a folder or file as root.

Everything I do as root is at the CLI - just the way I've always done it, but there is more than one way to skin a cat, as they say!