cannot connect to X server, in the konsole terminal as root

james2b · 11-21-2008, 02:57 PM

I get this; "cannot connect to X server", when in the konsole terminal as root user attempting to edit my xorg.conf file. So with; su -l, to get as the root, I then typed in; "kwrite /etc/X11/xorg.conf" to open this file to edit it for display resolution, but it would only give that error. So in Slackware 12.1 with KDE 3.5.9, and logged in as a regular user in the GUI run level, what text editor do I use, and how to make it able to connect to X server with a terminal as root? (su, or su -, or su -l, or this; su -c)? Thanks for help.

brianL · 11-21-2008, 03:04 PM

Try:

Code:

kdesu kwrite /etc/X11/xorg.conf

x_terminat_or_3 · 11-21-2008, 04:32 PM

Or, even better, when you open the file in your KDE application (Kate,Kwrite,Knotes,Quanta,Kedit,Kwhatever), type this in your location bar:

fish://root@localhost/

It will ask for your root password, and you can the proceed to edit the file. If it takes a while to edit, your password cache will have flushed, and you will have to retype it.

Very handy because it doesn't leave you with a program running with root privileges.

dive · 11-21-2008, 05:05 PM

Or learn to use vim

kukibl · 11-21-2008, 05:09 PM

Or type "xhost + local:" as normal user and then su to root.

T3slider · 11-21-2008, 06:52 PM

Or use the CLI editors in a terminal like vi, nano, pico, joe, mcedit, ...

It would also be better to use `kdesu ...` as suggested by brianL instead of doing anything with xhost...there are possible security implications with xhost. kdesu at least only allows root access to that one specific X program and not the whole X server (and it only allows access for root and not every other user on the system in the case of multiuser systems).

james2b · 11-22-2008, 07:00 PM

Thanks for all the help. I just logged into Slackware as root user, then I did the edit to my xorg.conf file, then I re-booted back in as standard user to make the display settings changes with the; NVIDIA X Server Settings tool, and saved to xorg.conf, and ran as root; nvidia-xconfig just to be sure. Then in the KDE display configuration I selected that box for the; "apply settings on KDE startup" option, which now does keep my 17" LCD at a native 1280 x 1024 resolution when I do a re-boot. So then the other Linux major distros work different than Slackware does for editing a system file as root user with a terminal, because I have used in the others; su -l , and it did work to edit my boot grub menu.lst file.