[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#659878: Bug#659878: Bug#659878: su - does not work in wheezy.

[Bob Proulx]

Alexander Gattin wrote:
> Christian PERRIER wrote:
> > Moo Lambda wrote:
> > > Now "su - " does not work to open x applications on wheezy.
> > > Should I switch to fedora?

I don't see how this is related to the bug ticket "cannot set terminal
process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device".  It should be in
a separate ticket.

> IIRC in RH/Fedora/CentOS/SLX this is handled
> by smth like pam-xauth module, which is installed
> and activated by default there.
> 
> > Also, "does not work" is not a very detailed bug
> > report. We may need more information.
> 
> I never tried pam_xauth in Debian, but most
> probably it will work with our shadow (so this is
> really PAM configuration issue, not shadow's bug
> IMHO).

"su -" works for me.  Almost assuredly this related to the XAUTHORITY
environment variable.  But also almost assuredly it is affected by the
choice of session manager because various session managers mess with
that variable.

  rwp at example:~$ printenv XAUTHORITY
  /home/rwp/.Xauthority
  rwp at example:~$ su -
  Password: 
  root at example:~# printenv XAUTHORITY
  /home/rwp/.Xauthority

Works.  Can open X window applications.  But for example if that were
an NFS mounted home directory with restricted permissions then root
would have no permission to access that file and "it would not work"
and would not be able to open an X application.

Bob
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-shadow-devel/attachments/20130208/a426796b/attachment.pgp>