Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Harsh criticism from the OpenBSD folks

[Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Morriss wrote:
> Joerg Mayer wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 03:31:14PM -0400, Jeff Morriss wrote:
> >
> > > % su
> > > # ethereal
> > >
> > > > X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
> > > > Gdk-ERROR **: X connection to aspen:10.0 broken (explicit kill or 
> > > > server shutdown).
> > >
> > >
> > > # # Argh: 'ssh' doesn't think 'root' should be able to run X apps 
> > > through my connection...
> > > # exit
> > > % su -
> > > # export DISPLAY=mylaptop:0.0
> > > # ethereal
> > >
> > > but of course GTK won't premit that:
> > >
> > >
> > > > Gtk-WARNING **: This process is currently running setuid or setgid.
> > > > This is not a supported use of GTK+. You must create a helper
> > > > program instead. For further details, see:
> > > >
> > > >   http://www.gtk.org/setuid.html
> > > >
> > > > Refusing to initialize GTK+.
> >
> >
> >
> > Why don't you install and configure sudo? It should solve all that.
> >
> > Just do "sudo ethereal", type your user password or the root password
> > (depending on your sudo config) and all is up and running.
>
>
> Unfortunately, 'sudo' won't solve that problem: the X stuff is still 
> run/built by the 'root' user (and, as above, 'ssh' won't let that happen).

After some more discussion and reading, I found out what my problem is: 
the 'su' on Solaris doesn't pass whatever 'xauth' stuff is necessary 
through, thus causing 'ssh' to think that 'root' isn't authorized to run 
X things on my $DISPLAY.  Other OS's may behave differently (indeed 
Redhat Linux does).

Of course, if the GUI were running as my uid (privsep) then Solaris 
users wouldn't have this problem. ;-)

ps. I guess now I'll use "ssh root@localhost" instead of "su -"!