On Mon, 13 Jan 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > i have been getting this error message every time i try to start X as a > regular user. I can only start the X server as root. I am using gnome > and KDE as my managers.
The explanation requires a tiny bit of Unix/Linux knowledge: X requires direct access to your hardware. You don't want just any program to have that access. Therefore, only programs run by root can have it... with one little exception. There are some programs that ordinary users must be able to run and which require more "power" than they have. Therefore Unix/Linux has a feature called suid (and sgid) which means that a program can be run by ordinary, unprivileged users but as if they were run by another (presumably more privileged) user or group. For some reason your X server isn't marked suid root (i.e. "run with root's privileges"). If you run a bog standard setup then it's your distribution vendor's fault - please contact them for support or join their mailing lists or whatever. If you are not running a standard setup but compiling X from sources -- then you got what you deserved ;) (man chmod will tell you the rest of the story - the command to fix it is something like chmod 4711 /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86) -Peter PS: A good trick is to use google as the first-line help desk. Simply taking an error message verbatim and feeding it to google usually gives instant results. PPS: Perhaps the error message should be reworded so that it 1) provides clueless users^W^Wpeople with little inclination to dig up information themselves with information on how to fix the problem (preferably with a command that can be run directly -- the X server knows the path to its executable so it shouldn't be too hard -- and with a pointer to man chmod) and 2) tells them that they might want to consider going back to whatever packages came with their distribution instead of compiling from source and finally, 3) it's not an XFree86 error in any case. _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
