[arch-general] Which security setting in Arch prevents forwarding X apps when su root?

[David C. Rankin]

On Thursday 08 October 2009 09:56:06 am Thomas Bächler wrote:
> David C. Rankin schrieb:
> > Listmates,
> >
> > Which setting in Arch prevents forwarding apps when you ssh -X in an Arch
> > box, su and then try to start a kde app, etc.? X forwarding works just
> > fine as a user, but when trying it su'ed to root, I get the following
> > error:
> >
> > [23:29 archangel:/etc] # kwrite
> > X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
> > kwrite: cannot connect to X server localhost:10.0
> >
> > kdm config? X config? Any pointers/links would be appreciated.
> 
> The suggestions made so far are either dangerous (xhost) or complicated
> (xauth, sux, kdesu, ...). You can have pam handle your authentication
> cookies if you add the following line to /etc/pam.d/su:
> 
> session optional pam_xauth.so
> 
> Now, run "su" or "su -" to get root, and it will have access to X.
> 

Thomas, All,

	Thanks for all the great answers. I now know how it works! I had no idea 
about the cookie, but that makes sense now. I will have to check my suse 
config to see how it is done there. They have something configured so it is 
automatic. Yep, they use Thomas' suggestion:

22:03 dcrgx:/etc/pam.d> cat su
#%PAM-1.0
auth     sufficient     pam_rootok.so
auth     include        common-auth
account  include        common-account
password include        common-password
session  include        common-session
session  optional       pam_xauth.so

	That explains it. Thanks for the help.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
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