Re: How do you use su under X?

[zelinsky@us.net (David S. Zelinsky)]

Helge Hafting <helge.hafting@daldata.no> writes:

> I want the cookie security so other users can't do anything wrong.
> I also want "root" to be able to use the X display no matter
> who is running x.  What is the simplest way to 
> achieve this?


At the command line in the user's session, type:

	su -c "xauth add $(xauth list $DISPLAY); xterm &"

This will prompt you for the root password, and then open an xterm running as
root in the background.  You will also be able to start other X clients from
that xterm window.  (Be sure to use double quotes.  Single quotes will expand
the $(xauth list $DISPLAY) as root, not as the current user.)

If you want to be fancy, you could make this a shell script, and put it in,
say, /usr/local/bin/xsu:

	#!/bin/bash
	su $1 -c "xauth add $(xauth list $DISPLAY); xterm &"

Then you would just type `xsu' to start an xterm as root, or `xsu joeuser' to
start an xterm as joeuser.

--
David Zelinsky
dsz@alumni.caltech.edu