Question

11

How can I run an application with a GUI as admin from a non-admin user session?

rated 0 times [ 11] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 137648 / 3 Years ago, mon, september 6, 2021, 2:50:42

I defined 2 user accounts:

one with admin privilege (with sudo right) => lets call it adminuser.

a 2nd one without any privilege => lets call it normaluser

and I configure the autologin on this 2nd user normaluser.

So when I open a normaluser session and want to run an application with admin privilege,

I open a terminal Ctrl+Alt+T and:

su adminuser

sudo anyapplication ...

It works fine, without having to quit the normaluser session (no need to open a adminuser session).

But what should I do if the application needs to run with a GUI (Graphic User Interface) ?

I though about that:

su adminuser

gksu anyapplication ...

but I get

** (gksu:9122): WARNING **: the connexion is closed

No protocol specified

No protocol specified

(gksu:9122): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0

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izeeas

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4 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago iedncommon · Accepted Answer

PAM can take care of it

This works for me on Ubuntu 16.04 (edit: it works too on 18.04 LTS):

put the line:

session optional pam_xauth.so

somewhere in:

/etc/pam.d/su

and/or

/etc/pam.d/sudo

and then doing "su -" or "sudo su -" I can use graphical apps as root.