[Gllug] do X windows manages work under root?

[Steve Nicholson]

I get the feeling I'm about to win plonker of the week award.

I've successfully installing Debian (testing) on my work station and I'm
not sure if this is a problem or how it should be.  Starting "X" as root
sawfish (window manager) doesn't appear to start for Gnome there is no
scroll bars etc for windows and under "Gnome control center" it says
"[sawfish isn't running]".  There is also a message in the
".xsession-errors" file "Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server",
nothing about sawfish, there is one regarding xscreensaver and not
running due to root.  Starting "X" as logged user steve, all works ok
and no error messages.

OK I know you don't normally run X as root, but when doing the install
and testing everything I guess I expected it to work just as well with
root.  I have spent ages digging round trying to figure out how to get
the window manager to work.  Is it a security thing that the window
manager wont work as root? I am aware that the normal way to operate is
start X as a normal user then promote to root when required while in X.

This is the first time I have had a real play with the X environment cos
everything I've done so far has been on servers and I've always removed
X or not installed it.  I've finally got round to building a Linux based
workstation so I can get rid of Doz.

Steve.


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