How to keep X11 display after su or sudo - MobaXterm
I have received a lot of emails asking how to keep X11-forwarding working after changing user to root inside a SSH session in MobaXterm. This is by default not allowed on Unix/Linux systems, because the X11 display connection belongs to the user you used to log with when connecting to your remote SSH server. X11-forwarding mechanism does not allow anyone to use the open display.However, in some cases you may need to start a graphical application like nedit or firefox in a sudo or su context. In order to achieve this, you could manually retrieve X credentials in the su/sudo context by looking up the “xauth list” for the original username and then adding them using “xauth add” to the current context.
You can also use a single (magic) command in order to achieve this!
For instance, here is a simple scenario:
- I start a SSH session to remote server “Server1” with user “john”
- In this session, I perform a “su -” command in order to become “root”
- If I run “xclock”, the following error occurs:
MobaXterm X11 proxy: Authorisation not recognised
Error: Can’t open display: localhost:10.0
Error: Can’t open display: localhost:10.0
I just have to execute the following command in order to retrieve my display and make “xclock” work:
xauth add $(xauth -f ~john/.Xauthority list|tail -1)
We hope this will help you if you need to have a working X11 display through SSH after becoming root.xauth add $(xauth -f ~john/.Xauthority list|tail -1)
