Lock screen does not work for root in gnome

[Jamie Zawinski]

Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha wrote:
> 
> Hm? xscreensaver drops privileges if runned as root, and thus it won't
> be able to access the X cookies file. Ending up unable to connect to the
> X server.

You'd rather it did what KDE does and not drop privs at all, running
arbitrary eye-candy sub-processes as root?

> It's not a case of it refusing to do something insecure. In fact, in its
> documentation, it states that it's "safe to run xscreensaver as root".
> But in order for it to work, it asks for a "xhost +localhost".
> 
> And that I don't find very secure.

It simply follows the security measures in use by the X server.  If you
find those onerous and choose to turn them off, that's your business,
but xscreensaver doesn't do that for you.  You could always jump through
hoops like this instead:
xauth -f /home/$USER/.Xauthority nextract - $DISPLAY | xauth nmerge -

-- 
Jamie Zawinski
jwz at jwz.org             http://www.jwz.org/
jwz at dnalounge.com       http://www.dnalounge.com/