If it's anything like my setup it'd be the 

swordfish/unix:11  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  00607ba4fc7c6a2ea9debc6ad5776376

so the xauth line run as root would be

xauth add .  00607ba4fc7c6a2ea9debc6ad5776376

afaik, there's no way to make it permanent since it's regenerated when you ssh in.  There's nothing to prevent you from setting up a simple shell script in your profile to do some wonkiness, but you'd be passing that hash around.

I'm making the assumption you're doing ssh forwarding and not popping the old X listen ports.

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 6:18 PM, Mark Phillips <mark@phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

Great!

I have this so far:

mark@swordfish:~$ echo $DISPLAY

swordfish:11.0

mark@swordfish:~$ xauth list

swordfish/unix:11  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  00607ba4fc7c6a2ea9debc6ad5776376

swordfish/unix:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  892fa0c2d392d8517dd525a7bcdc212b

swordfish.phillipsoasis.com:1  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  ce767df80405a8d280be4e258f06fed8

swordfish/unix:1  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  ce767df80405a8d280be4e258f06fed8

swordfish.phillipsoasis.com:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  d635d049952882222e1b238f7a8d1fbd

swordfish.phillipsoasis.com:11  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  cdb5f42e697aed89f9ff934ae36df625

So, which magic cookie goes with $DISPLAY=swordfish:11.0?

Also, how do I make this permanent? Or, do I have to export the DISPLAY and copy the magic cookie every time I su to root?

Mark

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 5:31 PM, James Mcphee <jmcphe@gmail.com> wrote:

ok.  So you start on box1, ssh -X to box2.  echo $DISPLAY.  xauth list.  su to user2 on box2.  export DISPLAY=<the display from user1>.  xauth add $DISPLAY . <the hash from the correct display from xauth list>.  Launch X application.

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 5:21 PM, Mark Phillips <mark@phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

There is an application I need to run as root on my Linode server, but it has to run in a gui. 

I have ssh and X11 forwarding set up between my Ubuntu 14.04 system and my Linode (swordfish). It works just great for a non-root user (xcalc, xconsole, the application I need to run, etc). However, when I try to run the application on the server as root, I get the error message "X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication." For xcalc running as root, I get

X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.

Error: Can't open display: swordfish:10.0

I have tried all sorts of google solutions - copying the user's .Xauthority to /root/ (also changing the ownership and permissions). But I just can't seem to log into swordfish as a normal user using ssh -X, su to root, and get the X11 forwarding to work. 

I also went so far as to install vnc4server on the Linode, xfce window manager, and vnc4viewer on my Ubuntu machine. That all works when I access the vnc server as a normal user, but I can't get any X11 apps to run as root (ie from a root command line in a terminal in the vnc window). The error message when I try to run xcalc or other X11 apps is "No protocol specified. Can't open display :1".

What are the special Linux guru magical incantations/spells to make X11 forwarding work for root?

Thanks!

Mark

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