Re: Stupid newbie questions.

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

George Bonser <george@shorelink.com> wrote:
>> 2.  What does debian use to tell it what window manager is default?  I
>> want window maker to be default.
>
>pod:/etc/alternatives# ls -l x-window-manager
>lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           21 Sep  7 15:09 x-window-manager
>-> /usr/X11R6/bin/wmaker
>
>Make /etc/alternatives/x-window-manager a symlink to your desired manager
>as shown above.

'update-alternatives --config x-window-manager' will also let you do it.

>> 3.  When I pull up an xterm as a regular use and su to root I can't
>> execute X programs as root, I always get a 'can't open display' error, I
>> know I've seen this in the past, but I can't remember how I fixed it.
>
>man xauth

I wouldn't bother with xauth. Just make /root/.Xauthority a symlink to
the .Xauthority file in your home directory if that's the only account
from which you expect to su and run X programs.

Of course, with bugs like the recently discovered buffer overflow in the
X libraries, you may want to be careful about running X programs as root
...

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]