Greetings and a question about user environment
 

I am new both to linux and linuxquestions so greetings to all!

I am using CentOS which was great with mc and without X but when I installed XFCE i ran into problem with file permissions which pins down to this.
In level 3 this problem does not exist.
I login as myself (yuri) and startx.
If I open gnome-terminal and type
$ groups
admins
In fact I belong to admins, ftp, and httpd
$ groups yuri
admins ftp httpd

$echo $USER
yuri

X applications cannot access the files that they are meant to.
Now a possible clue
$su - yuri
Pass and such

$ groups
admins ftp httpd

Now X programs can access the required files if started from the same session from gnome-terminal. But not if started from launchers.

What can be missing in my user environmnet that su fixed and how to set it at X startup?

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HP Proliant ML110 G2, CentOS 3.6, XFCE, LAMPS

What programs are you trying to start from the gnome-terminal (i'll take it you get the GUI to start in runtime level 3... considentally enough, runtime 5 is gui at start..)

Are they programs any user should be able to start? or are they root-only programs?

I load into level 3. Then I load XFCE manually.
The programs that do not access some files owned by httpd group, which i am the member of, are user programs. All root services are loaded at level 3 and work fine.

The system cannot see that the user is a member of secondary groups untill you do "sudo su - $USER; leafpad (or xffm, jedit, etc)"

After that the programs run fine in terminal. I do not want to load in GUI by default - it is a server. There must be a way set this environment somewhere in startup scripts but I do not know where or how. I do not want to add the user to system group either.

Advice will be very appreciated
Thank you for helping me