Unable to start X Server - unless root user

Scott Holt scott at prism.gatech.EDU
Mon Mar 25 04:19:52 AEST 1991


In article <1991Mar22.131041.10327 at hollie.rdg.dec.com> attwool at exocet.enet.dec.com () writes:
>Machine: RS6000 
>
> Is it normal for ONLY the root user to be able to start up 'xinit' ?, I
>hope its not,
> I've added users and choosen their startup environment using SMIT, but
>if i login to
> the newly created account I get an error message which reads...
>  'Unable to start X server'
>

Did you install this system from a image backup? This seems to happen to
systems installed (or re-installed) from backups. The problem is that 
some entries in /dev get recreated in such a way to only root can access
them. Its been a while since this happened to me, but I think the
offending entry was the one for /dev/tty - it was writable only by
root, but needs to be world writable. 

- Scott
-- 
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Scott Holt                 		Internet: scott at prism.gatech.edu
Georgia Tech 				UUCP: ..!gatech!prism!scott
Office of Information Technology, Technical Services



More information about the Comp.unix.aix mailing list