On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 09:48:40PM -0700, Charles Curley wrote: > Interesting. I routinely log in as my non-root user, charles, and then > 'su -', which gets me a root shell. I can then run X programs just > fine. So your comment above got me curious. > > charles@jhegaala:~/Desktop$ su - > Password: > > Today is Sweetmorn, the 41st of Chaos, 3188. Lies and slander, sire! > root@jhegaala:~# echo $XAUTHORITY > /home/charles/.Xauthority > root@jhegaala:~# > > So I expect that something has already done the export for me, and it > is unnecessary.
unicorn:~$ echo "$XAUTHORITY" /home/greg/.Xauthority unicorn:~$ su Password: root@unicorn:/home/greg# echo "$XAUTHORITY" /home/greg/.Xauthority root@unicorn:/home/greg# exit unicorn:~$ su - Password: root@unicorn:~# echo "$XAUTHORITY" root@unicorn:~# logout That makes me curious about what has been done to your system, which is clearly behaving differently from mine. "su" with no arguments preserves the environment, but "su -" establishes a new environment and launches a login shell. The XAUTHORITY variable should be lost, but perhaps something in your shell profile(s) is recreating it.