TightVNC and sudo privileges

[mad-hatter]

Hello,

Trying to run a programme on the Pi from my win 7 machine using tightvnc,
no problems with tightvnc, works fine.

The programme I'm trying to run needs root privileges or sudo.

I can run the programme on the Pi with no problems from a root or LX terminal.

If I log in from my win 7 machine and run the programme from a root terminal its fine,
if I try sudo ./myprog from an LX terminal,

I get the following error:-

pi@mypi ~/qt4/io1 $ sudo ./io1
Client is not authorized to connect to Serverio1: cannot connect to X server :1
pi@mypi ~/qt4/io1 $

Is this a privilege problem, is there a way to run this programme from
my win 7 machine as a normal user using sudo ./myprog.

Thanks for any help offered.

Regards

[FTrevorGowen]

Although I've noted similar issues with trying to run "synaptic", which requires privileged user authorisation, via tightvnc, "sudo blah ..." has usually worked. How do you establish your VNC connection? - I mainly login via a PuTTY ssh (secure shell) with X11 and port forwarding enabled (example screenshots at http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... aspPi.html , more info. on this approach can be found in the wiki). Does your (unnamed) program really require root privileges? Some tools really only require the user to be a member of a specific group eg. CUPS - lpadmin, i2c-tools - i2c. Whilst user pi is already a member of a number of groups - use the "id" command to see them, a new user will not be - eg. use "sudo adduser fred lpadmin" to add the (existing) user "fred" to the group "lpadmin". Hope this is of some help.

[mad-hatter]

Hello FTrevorGowen ,

Thanks for the reply.

I'm using TightVNC, and connecting to the PI with the LDXE desktop running.
This way I can use the normal Pi menu and get a root terminal.

Pi access.jpg (14.5 KiB) Viewed 1887 times

I'm also using MobaXterm_Personal_6.1 set up as Pi, root or user.
Again I can boot direct to the desktop and use the Pi menu
or to root, this gives me full control. In a normal terminal, sudo works
as expected.

Yes, I need root privileges to run programs using bcm2835, gpfsel_list and other
programs, that access the GPIO low level functions.

Regards

[FTrevorGowen]

I've only just started playing with GPIO stuff myself - mainly via "i2c-tools" and/or Gordon D.'s "WiringPi" 'C' libraries, neither of which require root privileges. Historically I have more experience with Red Hat/Fedora Linux than Debian (although my netbook is dual-boot XP/Ubuntu). Before I retired, I used PuTTY to remotely login and work on code running on a Fedora based HP cluster but, again, that was "high-level" (Mixed 'C' & Fortran) stuff. Because I have several Pi's, but only one HDMI/DVI monitor I tend to just use PuTTY and rely on X-forwarding. One possibility has occurred to me though - whilst it's not usual for root on a Pi to have a password have you tried assigning one, (remotely) logging in from a PuTTY(-like) terminal shell and then invoking superuser ("su") mode rather than using "sudo". It's probably more risky but might work.