tlug: Xwrapper (was Xwrapper and "and Cathedral and Bazaar"

[Gliebe Harald <harald@example.com>]

> On 31-Mar-98 Jonathan Byrne--3Web wrote:
> 
> >>how did you solve the problem?  Or, RU only running as root?
> > 
> > I'm running only as root when I need to use X.  People say that's a
> > dangerous way to surf the Net, so I'm basically doing all of my surfing
> on
> > Windows.  I'm hoping to find a work-around, though.  On my work machine,
> > it's starting with an X login prompt like I set it to, which allows me
> to
> > log in under X with my own userid (I don't think that's a good
> work-around,
> > but it's the only one I know), but on my home machine it's not giving me
> an
> > X login, just a standard shell prompt login, forcing me to be root all
> the
> > time.
> > 
> > I'm hoping to find a way to start X from the shell prompt without
> logging in
> > as root, but I'm still kind of new at this stuff.  If Scott's reading
> the
> > mail this morning, maybe he'll bring the PHT cavalry over the hill and
> save
> > us :-)
> 
> On my system the X server has its sticky bet set:
> 
> % ls -l  /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_S3
>  -rws--x--x   1 root     users     2372006 Aug  5  1997
> /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_S3
> 
> This can be done with a command like (as root)
> 
>  chmod u+s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_S3 
> 
> This means that an ordinary user can run X but it the permissions of root.
> Since this was the way the system got set up when I installed it (I
> haven't
> changed anything)  I assume that this is the normal way things are done.
> 
> David
Hi,
This was the case until the last release of XFree. (Since the date of your
Xserver
is Aug 97, it's probably an older version.) In the new version (3.3.2) the
server is no 
longer SUID, but needs Xwrapper to get started. 
I installed 3.3.2 over a RedHat 5.0 distribution and had no problems
starting X with
the startx script  (which is included in the XFree release). Other or older
startup scripts
may have problems, because they are calling X directly instead of the
xwrapper, so
perhaps a look at the original startx script (released with the server) may
help.
I'm only at a Win95 machine at the moment, so I'm just guessing what could
be the problem.
Hope that helps anyway,

Harald



> ---
> Dr. David Dibben
> National Food Research Institute
> 2-1-2 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8642. Japan
> Tel:  0298 38 8029           
> Fax: 0298 38 8122
> E-Mail: dibben@example.com
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Featuring Tague Griffith of Netscape i18n talking on source code
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www.twics.com  info@example.com  Tel:03-3351-5977  Fax:03-3353-6096