[SLUG] only root can run X

From: Greg Schmidt (slugmail@gschmidt.net)
Date: Tue Nov 12 2002 - 09:17:14 EST


Root can run X with startx. The three normal, mortal users get:

Authentication failed - cannot start X server.

Perhaps you do not have console ownership?

The ~/.Xauthority is a 63-byte file for root and zero bytes for the other
three users. I think that's supposed to hold the MIT magic cookie.

Putting "Perhaps you do not have console ownership" into google.com/linux
found a bunch of stuff where others had the problem, but no answer. One
of the most promising was to run startx --:4, startx --:5, and up. I
think the idea was to start X on different ttys until you found one that
would work. It didn't.

It's Mandrake 9.0. I installed it about 36 hours ago, and it was working
fine. I didn't like the fonts in OpenOffice, but it was working. I
didn't care about the fonts in OpenOffice because the whole idea was to
build linuxfromscratch next to it. LFS boots fine, it's just not very
useful, yet. I had to compile the kernel again because I built it on an
ext3 partition, (I guess the book uses ext2 for a reason.) and I skipped
the LILO parts because I'm using GRUB. I also skipped the networking
parts because I want to use dhclient instead of static addresses. (Ian
Blenke likes dhclient; it must be fine. :) ) I also copied /etc/fstab
off the base (Mandrake) install into the LFS partition and forgot to rem
out some lines before I booted LFS the first two times but LFS's fstab is
OK now. I had to go back and fix some stuff to get LFS straightened out,
but I'm reasonably sure I was chroot'ed into it properly whenever it
mattered.

Other than that I didn't change a thing! :)

Thought maybe I had buggered up /etc/password on Mandrake's partition
while building the shadow and password files on the LFS partition, but
I can still log in at the console. I haven't even downloaded X11 source
onto the LFS partition yet, much less tried to build it.

I found some references to /etc/security/console.perms, but I think the
line:
<xconsole> 0600 /dev/console 0600 root.root
is how it should be. It's that way it is on the machines that work, like
the one I'm using to write this.

So LFS boots, but doesn't have a dhcp client, yet. I'll get around to
that. Mandrake boots, and normal users can ping cisco.com, but only root
can run X. That's a bother.

How can I get normal logins running X again? What did I do to my Mandrake
install?

Thanks,

Greg



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