SOLVED - Unable to view sudo apps on VNC terminal

[DrNic]

HI,
I have tried to search for the answer to this, but it seems no-one has had exactly the same problem (or I'm too dumb to recognise it!)
I have tightvnc up and working beautifully all except for one problem.
If I try to use any application (or area of an application ie. in the system settings of KDE) that requires sudo I can't see the resulting "sudo" area!
I've googled and found someone with the same problem but the site is a "pay for answers" place - the link is here for (perhaps a better) explanation of the problem: http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/L..._22058969.html

Could this be something to do with Xauth?
I should clarify that I have tightvnc working all bar this problem - so I get through to the GUI (KDE) on my headless server and can do everything but sudo stuff.
Interestingly if I ssh in via PuTTy aptitude also misbehaves in the same way - it will run but not show any packages in the konsole window. I CAN, however, just issue commands like "sudo apt-get install smartmontools" and this will install as expected !!!!
Anyone have any ideas what is going on and how I can sort it?

All pointers greatly appreciated!

Nic

[DrNic]

Re: Unable to view sudo apps on VNC terminal

Anybody, please, help?!

Nic

[mmetan]

Re: Unable to view sudo apps on VNC terminal

accept it as a newbie statement

could it be because of xhost? may be your settings wont allow host users to perform root operations... try to run command "xhost +" and look at the output. May be you should edit some profile files or may be "sudoers" file. Its slightly possible in profile.d file that there is a "ulimit" parameter.

Donno...

good luck....

[DrNic]

Re: SOLVED - Unable to view sudo apps on VNC terminal

Thankyou mmetan for your thoughts and suggestions.
xhost + is just a little too unsecure for my liking (allowing all X connections as it does) so I went looking some more, and then some more, until finally I have found an answer.
Now I may be doing something equally as unsecure but so far I cannot find what the argument actually means that I am using after typing tightvncserver in the konsole!!
Anyway the working arg is

tightvncserver -ac

I have looked in the man pages and googled etc but can't find what this is doing.
OH well it works like a charm now.
Hope this post may help someone else who gets into my position, as it seems that there aren't many other users who have experienced this.
I wonder if anyone knows the action of this option??

Nic

[DrNic]

Re: SOLVED - Unable to view sudo apps on VNC terminal

OK after more digging I have found the answer to my own question.
-ac is an option for X server which actually is just as unsafe if not worse than xhost +!!!

disables host-based access control mechanisms. Enables access by any host, and permits any host to modify the access control list. Use with extreme caution. This option exists primarily for running test suites remotely.

As per the man page.

Somehow I need to just work out what on my machine is actually preventing the access I want and edit that file rather than these "hacks" I keep doing!!

Nic