I have two problems with xhost that have been bothering me ever since I started using Ubuntu back at Hoary. I would really like to find a solution to them.

(1) The command "xhost +localhost" doesn't work. It says it works, but I cannot open graphical applications as the root user (e.g., synaptic). The only way I can get it to work is to use "xhost +", which everyone emphatically says you shouldn't do.

(2) I want to allow root to run graphical programs automatically, so I don't have to issue an xhost command every time. This seems pretty basic. I've seen the suggestion to put the xhost command in xinitrc, but that does not work. Even when I insert the line "xhost +", I still start out unable to run graphical programs as root until I type "xhost +" in a shell.

I've found several other threads about xhost on LQ, but none of the solutions work for me.

Thanks for any help.

For (1), try

Well, daggone, that worked. I had found that in another thread and tried it (I have it in my .bash_history to prove I'm not imagining things) and it didn't work. It was shown as "xhost +LOCAL:" in that thread, but it works with or without caps.

Thanks for your help. Now, if I could only get this to work on bootup.

You can't do it on bootup, since this is a user-specific setting and your user isn't logged on at that point. It must be done in a user-specific area, such as ~/.bash_login or ~/.bashrc.

This brings up another thing I've never figured out: how to run something on login. This was important to me at one time because I wanted to be able to distinguish between times that I actually logged in, versus times that the computer turned itself on in order to record a show in MythTV.

I put a "touch .loggedin" in .bash_login, but it never got executed. My understanding (limited as it is) is that .bash_login only gets executed when you initially log in, not when you run an interactive shell. It didn't work in either case for me. I can put it in .bashrc and it works, but only in an interactive shell, not when I log in via the graphical login.

So, if you could help me figure out how to get .bash_login to work, or what other file I need to use, that would be a big help.

Thanks again.

Assuming you use Gnome and a graphical login, you need to configure GDM do do what you want.

For example, on Ubuntu 7.04, I've added "xhost +local:" to /etc/gdm/Init/Default, just before the final "exit 0" line, logged out and back in, and that worked. It's not user-specific though, but you could add a test to execute it only for a certain user.

Read up on GDM and its configuration (I'm a KDE user so I don't know Gnome or GDM too well).

Or, more elegantly, in Gnome go to System->Preferences->Sessions, and in the Startup Programs tab, press New and add the "xhost local:" command there.

Great, thanks for your help!