Hello All,

I connect to my F12 box with xdmcp. Logged as normal user, a can run all applications except those that need root privileges.

A pop up asks me the root password but nothing happens when I enter it.

Is it possible to run privileged commands in a remote X session ?

It should be possible. AFAIK 'su' and the graphical equivalents don't themselves require a secure session to work, but the program you are trying to use *may*. It might be a bug in the 'su' program you are using or a problem with your DISPLAY not being exported or some other access control problem. I have two suggestions for you:

1. Try opening a terminal, running 'su' in there, and running the program in question from there. If it fails to start, maybe it will print some reason why on the terminal for you.

2. XDMCP is not a very secure way to connect to a remote system. You can run a window manager on your local system, connect to the remote system with SSH, and run X programs over that encrypted tunnel as long as SSH is configured properly for it. I have even gone as far as to run a window manager on a remote system over SSH and it works fine and is much safer.

Thank you for answering, Bob.

I investigated the DISPLAY variable and it seems OK. But my tests seems to show that XAUTHORITY is not passed to the application.

Unfortunately this problem is not the only one I have with F12. Due to system instability, I had to stop my investigations.

I'm now trying Ubuntu, no (blocking) problem so far.

As for your 2°, I'm aware of the security issue. I use XDMCP only to connect my workstation to a server on the same LAN.

Should I get back to Fedora, I'll post a follow-up here.

Thx again.