Re: Can't start X apps from su

["Roberto Sanchez" <sanchezr@hotmail.com>]

> Hello List,
>
> I have a very-difficult-to-reproduce-but-pertaining problem with
> accessing X applications (such as nedit) when gaining access via
> su from some other user's X session. If I log in as root to X,
> such problem never occurs. But as I don't want to take the name
> of root in vain, I got used to using su. *Usually* things work,
> but suddenly, after an indefinite amount of time, it just doesn't
> work any more with the only statement that it cannot connect to
> X session. As a side-effect calling mc from su session becomes
> miraculously black-and-white. If I close all open terminals,
> restart one and go into another session of su, I could sometimes
> regain normal su operation and sometimes not. This has been
> bugging me since I installed Debian (oh, it's 3.0r1 stable), but
> I lived with it until now...
>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> Andrej
>
>
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What I do to avoid this problem is execute commands using sudo.  This way I 
don't have a need to login to X as root and I never get the "cannot connect 
to display" error message.  I have also found that sudo doesn't use the same 
search path as BASH.  I haven't looked to see if this can be customized from 
a config file, but certain apps (i.e., ifconfig which is located in /sbin, 
as opposed to /usr/bin) need the explicit path specified.

-Roberto



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