[Tfug] running programs from user account as root

[Ashley Pritchard]

Hello

I am new to this list but have been using Fedora since the beginning &
Before that I was using Red Hat. I have recently upgraded from FC6 to Fedora
7. Since then I have had to reinstall it a couple of times. The first time
was due to seLinux being set as default as enforced & it would not allow me
to download programs from the internet so I had the gumshoe to attempt to
uninstall it. Well Linux being a house of cards that made my installation
non-bootable & unrepairable with out a reinstall. Well after a little
research I found out that seLinux could be disabled which was fine with me.
So then after several package updates & the total struggle of getting DVD,
MP3 support in my system again, which is something I feel should be included
even though they do not comply with the philosophy of "FREE", some updates
came down for seLinux & I applied them even though I had it disabled on my
system. Then shortly after that I started having trouble useing programs
that require root access from my user account. I am able to login as root
when that package updater says that there are updates available but the
application will not run & neither will any other program that requires root
access to run. However I am able to login to gnome as root from the GDM &
run all the programs I want. I tried deleting the user account & creating
another user account with a totally differnet user name & password & the
same thing occurred.
Overly frustrated with attempting to get the DVD, MP3 etc support, I did not
want another problem to resolve so I just re-installed the OS again to start
over again. So here I am again. I dissabled seLinux & thistime refused to
download & install any updates to seLinux but yet again I am not able to run
the package updater or any other program that requires root access from my
user account. I am entering the password correctly & am able to login as
root in the terminal but when I type the command 'pup' for the package
updater I get the following:
     Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/pup", line 31, in <module>
    import gtk
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py", line 76,
in <module>
    _init()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py", line 64,
in _init
    _gtk.init_check()
RuntimeError: could not open display
I would tell you what my system log says but I am useing my user account &
can not access it with out loging out & back in as root.
This is so frustrating! Especially when I actually got the forbidden fruit
of the linux community to work on my system  which turn out that it was a
problem with the intel integrated graphics card driver in fedora it is
defaulted to a 'experimental' driver  when it actuall comes with the correct
driver for the card which uses shared memory with the system & dynamic
memory which automatically allocates memory as needed for the graphics.
I would like to get some help resolving this issue of not being able to run
programs from my user account that require root access.
It was suggested to try 'xhost +localhost' or 'kdesu pup' & here is the
result:
[awp at localhost ~]$ xhost +localhost
localhost being added to access control list
[awp at localhost ~]$ su root
Password:
[root at localhost awp]# xhost +localhost
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

xhost:  unable to open display ":0.0"
[root at localhost awp]# kdesu pup
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

kdesu: cannot connect to X server :0.0
 so neither command resolved the issue.
If some one can help please do.
-- 
Diolch yn fawr, Ashley