Lock Screen as Root

[Dan Lund]

http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/man1.html

This may help your endeavour.

Brief synopsis:

It is safe to run xscreensaver as root (as xdm is likely to do.) If
run as root, xscreensaver changes its effective user and group ids to
something safe (like "nobody") before connecting to the X server or
launching user-specified programs.

An unfortunate side effect of this (important) security precaution is
that it may conflict with cookie-based authentication.

If you get "connection refused" errors when running xscreensaver from
xdm, then this probably means that you have xauth (1) or some other
security mechanism turned on. One way around this is to add "xhost
+localhost" to Xsetup, just before xscreensaver is launched.



On 4/16/07, Bryan O'Neal <BONeal at cornerstonehome.com> wrote:
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> Is their any way to lock your screen when logged in as root on FC6?
>
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> Let us say that I often log into my FC boxes as root. (Mostly to get VMWare
> WS 5.5 to do direct hardware access, but other things as well) Let us also
> pretend I like it this way and fully understand the risk I take and still
> believe that it is worth the risk.  That said, I would like to lock one of
> the workstations as root.  As we all know xscreensaver will not let me do
> this as there is a security bug that could allow others with counsel access
> to gain root without the root password.  Again, it is a risk I am willing to
> take (especially since if you have physical access you can gain the root
> password on FC6 using the install CD and Linux rescue; and again with
> physical access you can reset the bios password to) All that said, I still
> would like to lock my screen while logged in as root.  And I would like
> something that is reasonably stable, like running Beryl, VMWare, FireFox, or
> most other programs as root.
>
>
>
> I have heard of ways to force xscreensaver to use the lock screen plugin as
> root, but have not been able to find anything in my google search to
> describe how.  Any Ideas?
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> Bryan O'Neal
>  Cornerstone Homes & Development, Inc.
>  4220 E. McDowell Rd Ste. #108
>  Mesa, AZ 85215
>  (480) 505-1900
>
>
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