Dear All,
I know this sounds like a question that has been asked many a times before, but there is a serious twist in it, so please humor me and reas on.

Firstly, the set up:

Distro: SuSE Linux 7.3 Professional
kernel: 2.4.10-Gmbh (yes its old, working on recompiling the new one)
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400 AGP 4x 64MB

Things to know before describing the problem:
I have just downloaded the latest video drivers from Nvidia.com and installed them for my distro (SuSE 7.3)


Now the problem:
I wish to be able to run an application as root without having to log off /log back on and/or restart the X server.
I tried using su - and it logged me in fine, but when I try to launch an application I receive the following error:

Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:


Here are examples to illustrate this better:

Example 1: (quoted and bolded for readability_
Example 2: (quoted and bolded for readability)

Please reply if you can help. Your replies are well appreciated before hand

here's what you need to do:

# su -
Password:
# export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/kde/bin (or where kde/gnome are installed)
# export DISPLAY=localhost:0
# xmms

verigoth

Thanx for the reply. I have tried the steps you mentioned and I still got an error. Here is the run, bolded and quoted for readability

Note that export PATH seemed to have worked (as no errors where shown).

Please reply if you can help.

Thanx for the replies beforehand

well that's nothing to do with logging off or anything, you simply haven't allowed external access to your X sessions. run "xhost +root" and try again.

damn...new i forgot something thanks

verigoth

Nope, Still no can do. Same error message. Here is a test run for you to see my results (bolded and quoted for readability)

Also, If i try to do the xhost +root first, it still doesn't work. For example:
Can anybody please help? This is driving me nutts!

Try running xhost +root before you execute su -. If +root doesn't work, try +localhost.

well naturally it's the person that OWNS the X server that is the only one who can allow external connections...

hmm, Still not making sense. As user "samer" I gave localhost access to the X server. Now as root it STILL complains about connectiong to the XServer. Here is the run, bolded and quoted for readability

For Future Reference, I got this to work. I'm sure someone else may have similar problems, so here is a Qui Guide to What I did
1.) Open up a a Konsole/bash prompt.
2.) type in "xhost +localhost" without the quotes. This should say something like: "localhost being added to access control list"
3.)Log in as root with "su -" and type in your password
4.)type in "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/kde/bin" without the quotes. You may need to change this if you installed your KDE in a different directory
5.)type in "export DISPLAY=localhost:0"
6.)Now you can run programs as root without a log off!

NOTE: This will NOT work if you simply save the steps to some file and give it executable permissions. If anybody knows a way to get it to work as such, please let us Know. I tried it that way and it gave me a

does the file HAVE to be called graxs?
the path statement should not be related to your situation, and should be done in a different scope to the system. if you need executables in there you should add it to roots path. And of course using su in a script file is a pretty daft thing to do really.

You should also be able to creaet a permanent X host access file, as defined in "man xhost" which will make these changes permenent, rather than using a redundant script each time to do exactly the same thing.

Acid, I edited my message above. Frankly I'm the only user using this machine, and I don't want to keep logging off/on to access a program as root. I tried doing the executable file for the heck of it and It didn't work as mentioned above. If you know how please explain how I can generate such a script to make thkings permenant and allow running a program as root on the fly. Thanx for all the replies everyone. They are much appreciated.

well putting aside the issue that i don't like the idea, there's no simple way really... running su will start a new shell, and the remaining commands will not be executed until you exit that shell. a way around the issue would be to go down the line of something as equally icky as

xhost +whoever/wherever
su -c 'set something; something else; xterm'

that should then open a x terminal ready for use as root.. but it's not really too nice.

I see. I guess I can just stick to copy/paste and copy the exports as mentioned on this post, LOL. I understand your concern from the viewpoint of security, and I kinda also don't like doing it since Im not going to be always running on my machine. However, it is a quick and dirty way to do things.
For security puposes, I'll type in (or paste in) everything myself.

By The way, I tried doing it without the export Path..... and just doing the export DIPLAY= .... thingy and it worked too

just to clarify my reasoning: in Slackware (not sure about any other distro), when you su to root, your path is limited to /bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin. if you wanted to run any executable not in any of those places you would have to change the path. not knowing where the application shassouneh wanted to run resided, i said to change the path.

verigoth