[NBLUG/talk] Ubuntu without booting into X

Bob Blick bobblick at ftml.net
Fri May 1 17:34:54 PDT 2009


Bill Kendrick wrote:
> On Fri, May 01, 2009 at 04:43:28PM -0700, Bob Blick wrote:
>>> Is 'startx' what you want, vs. "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start"?
>>> (i.e., do you get precisely the environment you want?)
>> If I do startx rather than gdm, applications which need superuser creds
>> won't pop up a password requester. Weird.
> 
> Err, are you doing a 'startx' as a regular user, or while logged in as root?
> (I realize normal Ubuntu config, root can't log in, but you can always go
> and set a password).  Or are you doing 'sudo startx'?  If so, you're
> running X apps _as root_, which is NOT recommended, for security reasons.

I startx as a regular user. And then if I run Synaptic, for example, I
am unable to add/remove packages - no password requester pops up, so I
never get sudo. But if I start X through gdm, everything works normally,
except that gdm is then runnning so I can't log out of X back to the
same text-only session I had before. Having the login manager required
for proper functioning of the desktop is not something I've seen in
previous versions.

Cheers,

Bob



More information about the talk mailing list