Four (even five) problems/queries on my FreeBSD installation

Aaron Peterson dopplecoder at gmail.com
Fri Sep 2 14:04:19 PDT 2005


> 1. I installed KDM to make the computer a little more
> userfriendly, but now I can't run things as su. Emacs
> refuses to start for instance, and when I am trying to
> adjust things in Login Manager (in KControl) it asks me for
> the root password, I enter it, and then I bounce back. What
> is the problem? I still can run emacs as lars, but not as
> superuser. (I can su in a terminal window of course)

It is likely that the permissions for your X server deny new windows
to be opened except by the user who is running X.  So if the problem
you are describing is that you start X/KDE as a normal user, then open
a shell window and su to root and try to run Emacs as root, it likely
will not work.  You should however be able to run Emacs fine as the
same user you started X/KDE with.  You can try something like "xhost
+" if you are in a fairly secure environment, or look at the man page
for "xhost" to find other options.  I don't know why KControl would
act that way, but I bet it is unrelated to your problems with Emacs.


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