[ale] startx'ing as a normal user

Mike Kachline kachline at medept17.coon.gatech.edu
Fri Jan 1 03:19:49 EST 1999


On Fri, 01 Jan 1999, Bastard Operator From Hell wrote:
>Okay, I've never had this problem before, and I cant for the life of me figure out why it's doing it now.  When I try and execute 'startx' from the command line as a normal user, I get the message:
>
>Fatal server error:
>xf86OpenConsole: Server must be running with root permissions
>You should be using Xwrapper to start the server or xdm.
>We strongly advise against making the server SUID root!
<snip>
	From what I understand of things, Xwrapper is a setuid program which
executes your XF86_XXX server. Basically, it's a security precaution.
Unfortunately, many of the "startx" shell scripts still don't look for or use
Xwrapper before X. One way to get around this is to simply create a file in
your home directory called ".xserverrc", then have the line of something like
"exec Xwrapper" in there.

									- Mike
============================================================================
Michael Kachline CS, Georgia Institute of Technlology
kachline at brightstar.gt.ed.net
http://brightstar.gt.ed.net/kachline
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