The title says it all. Sometimes I can enter my password but they don't do anything else. This is the gnome version of 11.1.

thanks for all the detail input I wonder why no one got back to you. Who is they. make sure your cap lock is off.

My non-root scripts do work. It is just the one's involving root permissions. After a bit more looking I don't have "gksu" and I couldn't
find it in the repositories. I finally found an rpm version on line but I need "libgksu" in order to install it. I did find an rpm version of this but it was an older library and wouldn't install.
This is the Gnome version of opensuse 11.1.
I'm completely new to suse as I have used ubuntu the past four years. As I understand it these, at one time were in the suse repositories but not now. If I am incorrect please let me know. Just kinda stumbling around here but I think I've narrowed it down a bit.

you need to assume root ok. In a terminal that is easy type su enter then your password now your root and you never need to type sudo. so let say you want to browse with your file manager as root just open a terminal and type su then enter then your root password. now type nautilus and now you are runing nautilus as root. with root privileges be careful.
alt f2 opens a command line click option and run as root. you can run any program you want as root. su password gedit etc etc.
your out of the sudo asylum it is just to simple. open a terminal. if you had the kde version it has a option to run kde as super user.
no more sudo just Super Users like you.

Tried that and got the following error:
rick@linux-vqit:~> su
Password:
linux-vqit:/home/rick # nautilus

(nautilus:1695): Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

(nautilus:1695): Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

(nautilus:1695): Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)
GConf warning: failure listing pairs in `/apps/nautilus/preferences': Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)
(nautilus:1695): Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

(nautilus:1695): Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

(nautilus:1695): Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

(nautilus:1695): Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

I have seen this before your gconf is set not to run nautilus or gnome GUI programs as SU unless you login as root. saftey thing. you should still be able to open a terminal assume root and then run a script. another thing go into your yast or user admin and give that user (bin) privilages and any other one you want to give it.

After numerous mis-steps and restarts I finally got this going. Running "su" in the terminal just wouldn't work and since I've really been sick while trying to do all of this, my mind wasn't functioning properly so I decided to upgrade applications for a while. I noticed that one of them was "libgnomesu", so after installing it I went back to the terminal and ran "gnomesu, then "nautilus" and that gave me root.
I still get an error:
linux-vqit:/home/rick # nautilus
Initializing nautilus-open-terminal extension
Initializing nautilus-share extension
Initializing nautilus-dice extension
Nautilus-Share-Message: REFRESHING SHARES
Nautilus-Share-Message: ------------------------------------------
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "net"
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "usershare"
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "info"
Nautilus-Share-Message: end of spawn args; SPAWNING

Nautilus-Share-Message: returned from spawn: SUCCESS:
Nautilus-Share-Message: exit code 255
Nautilus-Share-Message: ------------------------------------------
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: usershares are currently disabled


** (nautilus:5194): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Operation not supported

** (nautilus:5194): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Operation not supported
Nautilus-Share-Message: REFRESHING SHARES
Nautilus-Share-Message: ------------------------------------------
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "net"
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "usershare"
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "info"
Nautilus-Share-Message: end of spawn args; SPAWNING

Nautilus-Share-Message: returned from spawn: SUCCESS:
Nautilus-Share-Message: exit code 255
Nautilus-Share-Message: ------------------------------------------
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: usershares are currently disabled

Nautilus-Share-Message: REFRESHING SHARES
Nautilus-Share-Message: ------------------------------------------
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "net"
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "usershare"
Nautilus-Share-Message: spawn arg "info"
Nautilus-Share-Message: end of spawn args; SPAWNING

Nautilus-Share-Message: returned from spawn: SUCCESS:
Nautilus-Share-Message: exit code 255
Nautilus-Share-Message: ------------------------------------------
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: usershares are currently disabled

I'll get this figured out in a little bit. At least I can get root when and where I want. When I get to feeling better I'll redo my nautilus scripts so that they point in the right direction.
Thanks to all who helped, I really appreciate it.
P.S. I was kinda confused over gconfig when I visited the URL's from the previous error messages.