Bug#808794: VESA video driver fails when Xorg is executing as non-root
On Sun, May 1, 2016 at 01:38:31 -0700, Sunny Sachanandani wrote:
> I also faced this problem after installing GNOME on Debian stretch running
> on Virtualbox which uses the vesa driver unless you install the guest
> additions. I came across this page describing how rootless X11 is supposed
> to work: http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/14268.html
>
> Here's the important bit:
>
> > When the Xorg binary is no longer suid root, UMS drivers will not work.
> To solve this there is a new suid-wrapper called Xorg.wrap which is suid
> root, when installed this wrapper will get called in stead of the real X
> server, and it will check if there are KMS capable cards in the system, if
> KMS capable cards are found it will drop all elevated rights and execute
> the X server as a normal user. If no KMS capable cards are found it will
> execute the X server with root rights, allowing old UMS drivers, such as
> the proprietary drivers for some cards, or the vesa driver to work.
>
> Can the X11 maintainers please implement something like this? Or borrow
> from upstream if it already exists?
>
It exists, it's in the xserver-xorg-legacy package.
Cheers,
Julien
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