Bug 7582

Summary:	xdg-su should not care if there is no GUI when being run as root.
Product:	Portland	Reporter:	Tom Whipple <bug>
Component:	xdg-utils	Assignee:	Fathi Boudra <fabo>
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	high
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86 (IA32)
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Attachments:	Don't depend on $DISPLAY if already in the right account

Description Tom Whipple 2006-07-20 15:32:25 UTC

Suppose we are already root. Then,

# xdg-su -c whoami

Should simply print "root" without any difficulty. Instead,
Command (xdg-su -c whoami) gave exit code 3, expected 0
Incorrect output written to stdout, as shown below
expected stdout:root

Unexpected output written to stderr, as shown below:
stderr:xdg-su: no graphical method available for invoking 'whoami' as 'root'

See test case xdg-su/t.su_basic_asroot

Comment 1 Waldo Bastian 2006-07-31 08:38:05 UTC

Defer till after 1.0
xdg-su will be dropped from 1.0 release

Comment 2 Nicolas Lécureuil 2009-08-03 13:36:44 UTC

works perfectly here

#./xdg-su -c whoami
root

can you still reproduce with a cvs snapshot ?

Comment 3 Francois Gouget 2012-12-05 19:53:48 UTC

I can still reproduce this problem here:

# DISPLAY= xdg-su -c whoami
xprop:  unable to open display ''
./xdg-su: 304: [: x: unexpected operator
xdg-su: no graphical method available for invoking 'whoami' as 'root'


xdg-su does say that it's meant 'for use inside a desktop session only'. But I still feel it would make sense to fix this (see the attached patch).

Comment 4 Francois Gouget 2012-12-05 19:55:05 UTC

Created attachment 71041 [details] [review]
Don't depend on $DISPLAY if already in the right account

Comment 5 Francois Gouget 2015-12-07 10:14:22 UTC

This bug is still present in b110b355 (2015/11/12).

Comment 6 Simon Lees (SUSE) 2016-11-03 00:31:33 UTC

Personally I don't think it makes sense to run xdg-su outside a graphical session, if one launches a desktop file calling xdg-su then a graphical prompt needs to be shown to ask for the password. If you are running from a terminal using "su -c".

There is of course the issues around wayland where I don't think xdg-su works currently.

Comment 7 GitLab Migration User 2019-02-16 13:28:13 UTC

-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-utils/issues/14.

Use of freedesktop.org services, including Bugzilla, is subject to our Code of Conduct. How we collect and use information is described in our Privacy Policy.