X11: run a gnome app as another user

Question

I have ubuntu + x11 + gnome.

I want to run a graphical application as another user.

However, when I start it from the command line using sudo -u otheruser app I get the error "No protocol specified".

How can I work arround this?

Hemicellulose

will be moved to superuser.com – Hhd

Answer 1

Use

xdg-su -u user -c command

Basswood

I believe you still need to use xhost to allow local connections from any user. – Lifeless

man xdg-su: xdg-su is for use inside a desktop session only. – Basswood

Answer 2

xhost '+si:localuser:USERNAME'

Ringtail

Answer 3

Execute this command first:

$ sudo xhost +

Then run the command you want as the other user:

$ sudo -i -u username
$ command you want to run

When you are done:

$ sudo xhost -

Lifeless

Nice find. Now Chrome and Flash runs fine as different user, but to get audio you need to pkill the pulseaudio-daemon of the current user first. – Pigg

sudo xhost +local: if you don't want connections from the internet – Surveillance

xhost + is highly unsafe: It will allow any user to connect to your X session and open windows to you. – Yarber

xhost +username to add username to list of users with access to the X server. Then xhost -username to remove that user afterwards – Deeprooted

Answer 4

Most solutions provided here don't integrate with Wayland and PulseAudio.

I wrote ego (Alter Ego) for this use case, it automatically handles xhost and Wayland and PulseAudio socket sharing: https://github.com/intgr/ego

So you just run ego app or ego -u somebody app

If you run into problems, please open an issue on GitHub. I may be the only user of it, so it hasn't gotten much testing yet.

(And I notice that I'm a decade late with this answer, but hopefully it will help somebody :D)

Earshot

Answer 5

You probably need to tell your X server to accept connections from another user than the one owning the server instance (you). Look into the xhost command.

Heymann

Answer 6

gksudo -u command

Impart

Tried this on my Ubuntu desktop, it did not work (same error msg. as in question). – Lifeless

Answer 7

gksu -u <user> -c <command>

Replace <user> with the username to run the command as, and <command> with the command you want to run. Remember that the program will be run in the <user>s context, but in the current directory.

In the popping up window, enter the password of the target <user> of course.

Yarber