problems with startx as user

[hicsuget]

When I first set up my system, I configured everything as root, and now I'm getting X configured to run as my regular login. All the eye-candy applications worked fine, but none of my internet applications could access the net. For instance, typing "firefox" at the command line would bring up a firefox window, but not only did it not load my homepage, it would not permit clicking in the URL or search bars. If I su'd to root in my X-windows terminal, typing "firefox" at the command line brought it right up. Gaim was malfunctioning similarly. And, obviously, running "ping -c 3 http://www.google.com" from the shell as user resulted in an "unknown host" error.

So I added some more permissions to some applications and tried again, and this time I got a "cannot move Xorg.0.log to Xorg.0.log.old' error. So I had to chown my /var/log/ folder to group wheel to fix that. And now when I try to startx as my user, it totally fails and I get a "xf860penConsole: Server must be suid root" error.

I'm logged in to X as root now, and when I su to my user in a terminal and type "firefox", I get this:

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Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

xdpyinfo:  unable to open display ":0.0".
No running windows found
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified


(firefox-bin:29994): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

It's obviously a permission problem, but which files do I need to chmod/chown, and which groups should I put my user in? I'd hate to have to run "chmod -R ugo+rwx /*" to get it to work.

[masteroftheuniverse]

my advice at this point is re-emerge X to rescue the privileges for system files.
NEXT, as far as groups, wheel is a useful group, i like to put in audio, video, disk, console, bin, and a few miscellaneous. don't think there's a special one for network access.

[c4]

It sounds as if your problem is two-folded. First there seems to be some trouble for your user connecting to the net? The display errors however are correct, the default setup of X does not allow several users to use X on the same 'screen'. (eg :0.0) So what happens when you are logged in to X with root, and attempt to run firefox as your user, you have two users trying to use the same screen.

If you would like to use a multiuser invironment with X, you can allow serveral connections with the command xhost

for example:

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xhost +localhost

this will allow all users on localhost to use the xserver at the same time.

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xhost +

would allow any user from any host, and this may be considered a insecure setup.
The above will only last for as long as X is running, so I believe the next time you restart X, or reboot, X goes back to its default mode (no multiuser).

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 export XAUTHORITY=$(echo /var/lib/xdm/authfiles/*)

will keep X allowing several users running apps at the same time even after reboots etc. I grabed this somewhere on the forums.

Now, you probably want to get things settled with your graphics, changing and altering the permissions might not be such a wise thing to do. No offence.

As far as I know, all users should be able to access eth0 or your network(s) and internet without any special groups or file permissions.

[hicsuget]

Thanks for the help. It turns out that my original problem with gaim was that I was using the wrong password when I attempted to log in. I re-emerged x11-xorg, and now I'm in a functional X environment as user.

Firefox still isn't working, though--I'm stuck using Links. I figured the problem had something to do with my having copied over my /root/.mozilla folder into /home/user/.mozilla, so I tried re-emerging Firefox. Now it is totally non-functional.

Typing 'which firefox' yields a /usr/bin/firefox, which is correct. But when I type 'firefox', nothing happens and it just moves me down to the next prompt. Typing 'killall firefox' immediately thereafter yields a 'no process killed' message.

So then I tried 'firefox &'. It echoes [1] 9021 (or some other number) and goes straight to the next prompt. Nothing else happens.
So then I tried 'firefox -P' and 'firefox -edit', and in each case my CPU redlined in an ostensive infinite loop, and nothing else happened.

What is the dizzle here?

[hicsuget]

Okay, so now everything is up and running. Apparently Firefox won't start when you don't have permission to open the userChrome.css file in your profile. Thanks again, guys.