X-related questions

[Ashley M. Kirchner]

    After over a decade of running text-only servers, and thanks to 
William Hooper yesterday with his help on getting one of my systems 
upgraded, I now have a dedicated X-server machine.  Gnome's running nice 
and cozy.  I have to say, I'm impressed, very impressed.  I even went as 
far as having VNC display my desktop on my Windows workstation so I can 
always get to that server.

    But now I have some questions:

    In order for VNC to connect and work, I have to be logged in on the 
server console.  Once I log out, it also kills the VNC connection and I 
can't get on anymore.  So, is there some way to setup VNC so that I 
don't have to be logged onto the server?  In other words, leave the 
server console logged out (sitting at the login screen) and be able to 
remotely connect through VNC, log in and work remotely?

    Second, since I refuse to log in as root, specially when I'm doing 
it remotely, this raises some issues.  For example, when I need to edit 
system files, say /etc/hosts, I can't do it.  When I launch gedit and 
open that file, it tells me the file is read-only because I'm not the 
owner.  The correct action of course, however there's no way for me to 
allow gedit to edit that file by means of additional credentials.  Even 
if I authenticate as root (by launching some system related 
configuration) it still won't let me edit system files (while logged in 
as a regular user.)  So again, how can I get past this?  I don't want to 
have to open a terminal window and using sudo or su to get to root just 
to edit the file ... in a text window.  Otherwise why have X installed, eh?

    Okay, back to playing with X...  I'm sure I'll have more questions 
later.

    Ashley

-- 
W | It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature.
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  Ashley M. Kirchner <mailto:ashley at pcraft.com>   .   303.442.6410 x130
  IT Director / SysAdmin / Websmith             .     800.441.3873 x130
  Photo Craft Laboratories, Inc.            .     3550 Arapahoe Ave. #6
  http://www.pcraft.com ..... .  .    .       Boulder, CO 80303, U.S.A.