Rootless XServer

adoa · 2014-10-26 13:30:36

Hello Guys,

recently I tried to switch from the catalyst drivers to the xf86-video-ati drivers and magically, I do not have weird artifacts and glitches anymore. Doing this I also could update the xserver from 1.15 to 1.16. Then I remembered that there was something about "rootless XServer" in the news and I rechecked: It refers to some Xserver.wrapper – which I do not have. However, I have no idea whether my current XServer is rootless or not. Should there be something appearing in the journal? Somewhere in the wiki it was written that having the XServer started by gdm is not enough. Do I have to setup something special?

The Info about that entire topic are a little bit vague and unclear. The wiki also speaks about the "XServer as a systemd user service". Is that the same as a "rootless XServer"? I am really confused in that regard.

Any kind of info is very much appreciated.

Last edited by adoa (2014-10-26 14:27:05)

Trilby · 2014-10-26 13:43:41

The news does not refer to a Xserver.wrapper. It does refer to the man page for Xorg.wrap.

If you have updated to Xorg 1.16, and if you have not done any special configuration, then congratulations - you are running 'rootless' X. This can be confered in (h)top or similar monitoring tools (or probably various other ways, htop seems easiest for me).

You only need to do special configuration with Xorg.wrap if you want to still run X as root.

As for the systemd service, I'm not sure what you are referring to, but one could always start X with a systemd user serice. That is not new (and IMHO not useful before or after the 1.15->1.16 update). But if you want more specific answers you need to pose more specific questions. You have either typos or mistakes in your post about what the news item says, then you refer to "somewhere in the wiki ..." That doesn't give us anything to work with.

adoa · 2014-10-26 14:19:31

Thanks for the answer to my very unspecific question. Let us get more specific:

The news itself says "Please note that launching X through a login-manager (gdm, kdm, ...) doesn't yet provide rootless access."

And indeed when asking "ps -ef | grep Xorg" I get

root       282   276  1 14:53 tty1     00:00:03 /usr/bin/Xorg.bin :0 -background none -noreset -verbose 3 -logfile /dev/null -auth /var/run/gdm/auth-for-gdm-CCUELL/database -seat seat0 -nolisten tcp vt1

which pretty much explicitly says that the Xorg.bin process is owned by "root". As a side note, also /usr/bin/gdm is owned by root.

The wiki page of the XServer says that the requirements are

systemd >= 216 ✔
kms drivers ✔
use "xinit" and that "display managers are not supported" ✘

It also refers to the systemd/user wiki page speaking of Xorg as a systemd user service. The info that I get there is much more confusing for me. But somehow I think this is *not* what I want.

Does that mean that if I want to keep using gdm, then I do not get a rootless XServer?

jasonwryan · 2014-10-26 18:14:04

Not a Sysadmin issue, moving to NC...

Arch Linux

#1 2014-10-26 13:30:36

Rootless XServer

#2 2014-10-26 13:43:41

Re: Rootless XServer

#3 2014-10-26 14:19:31

Re: Rootless XServer

#4 2014-10-26 18:14:04

Re: Rootless XServer

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