From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jul 3 05:06:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA06084 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 3 Jul 1997 05:06:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from snitterly.nanoteq.co.za (snitterly.nanoteq.co.za [163.195.221.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA06077 for ; Thu, 3 Jul 1997 05:06:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pc-pvl.nanoteq.co.za (pc-pvl.nanoteq.co.za [163.195.219.103]) by snitterly.nanoteq.co.za (8.8.3/8.8.3) with SMTP id OAA20807; Thu, 3 Jul 1997 14:10:09 GMT Received: by pc-pvl.nanoteq.co.za with Microsoft Mail id <01BC87BA.1446C3A0@pc-pvl.nanoteq.co.za>; Thu, 3 Jul 1997 14:04:53 -0000 Message-ID: <01BC87BA.1446C3A0@pc-pvl.nanoteq.co.za> From: "P. van Leeuwen" To: "'Steve Howe'" , freebsd-questions Subject: RE: in Xterm as root. Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 14:04:50 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk First check the environment variable DISPLAY. It should be :0.0 If that checks out, you probably have a xauthority problem. Im guessing that you ran xdm, logged in as a user and then used su to become root. The problem is that the .Xauthority file in /root isn't updated when you su. The fix is to run xauth -f /root/.Xauthority merge /home/user_I_su'ed_from/.Xauthority See man xauth. I inserted the above line in my /root/.login after a line which checks whether I su'ed. I can then run the graphical version of CVSup :) One last thing, make sure that there isn't a line saying xhosts + in any of your startup dotfiles. Type xhosts - to see if your problem goes away. Hope this helps Pierre P. van Leeuwen pvl@nanoteq.com http://www.nanoteq.co.za -----Original Message----- From: Steve Howe [SMTP:un_x@anchorage.net] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 1997 12:52 PM To: freebsd-questions Subject: in Xterm as root. in an Xterm window, as "superuser" - root, i get "Error: cannot open display" errors when i try to launch a "graphics" application such as XV, GV, GhostView, Netscape, etc. i know i shouldn't want to do this, but was wondering if something is wrong. ------------------------------------------------ all my text based apps work ok. and all my graphical based apps work ok as a normal user.