unable open xterm

[Thomas Dickey]

On Mon, 9 May 2011, Usuário do Sistema wrote:

> disregard my before email! sorry.
>
>
> I've just tried:
>
> 1- export DISPLAY=:0.0
>
> 2- xauth -f path list
> xauth:  creating new authority file path
>
> but the same error occur when I run xterm
>
> Warning: This program is an suid-root program or is being run by the root user.
> The full text of the error or warning message cannot be safely formatted
> in this environment. You may get a more descriptive message by running the
> program as a non-root user or by removing the suid bit on the executable.
> xterm Xt error: Can't open display: %s

If you're logged in as root, then the X libraries (from ~10 years ago)
will ignore the $DISPLAY variable.  It used to be a reliable workaround
to simply use the -display option (but I've seen a few machines where 
that's been broken).  That is

 	xterm -display :0.0

As noted, if you were using ssh -X, then the display would be set 
more/less automatically.

With RHEL 5.6, it's unlikely that xterm itself is setuid, since Red Hat's
been using utempter since RHEL 4.x - but on the odd chance that someone's
"fixed" your machine, stripping the setgid bit (or setuid...) won't do
much more harm than disable utmp updates.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net