On Sun, 2012-01-22 at 17:20 -0500, Sean Dague wrote: > On 01/22/2012 05:06 PM, Allen Weiner wrote: > > I'm stumped as to why I get differing behavior when issuing a certain > > command from a user terminal versus when that command is issued via > > KDE-autostart. I suspect there's a Linux fundamental I'm overlooking. > > I'm posting in the hope that someone will quickly see what I'm missing. > > > > Background: On Fedora 16 with KDE I'm trying out the "conky" system > > monitor. One of the things I'm having it do is display the most recent > > three lines of /var/log/messages every 30 seconds. The conky command is > > intended to run under a user account. On Fedora, /var/log/messages is > > readable only by root. So I modified the sudoers file to allow my user > > account to run the tail command as root. I modified the conky > > configuration file to issue sudo tail instead of tail. When I issue the > > conky command from a user terminal, /var/log/messages displays. Also, > > the logwatch report notes many hundreds of issuances of sudo tail for a > > multihour session. > > > > Next, I wanted to have conky automatically start when I login to KDE. I > > added conky to KDE autostart. Conky runs fine except that it does not > > display anything from /var/log/messages. Logwatch does not report any > > sudo activity. I have open a root terminal and a user terminal and I > > don't get any relevant messages, such as "permission denied". I'm > > inclined to think this is a problem with permissions > > to /var/log/messages, but I don't see how that would be happening. > > > > Here is info on two of the relevant processes: > > > > [aweiner@localhost ~]$ ps -f 2626 > > UID PID PPID C STIME TTY STAT TIME CMD > > aweiner 2626 2520 0 16:01 ? Sl 0:06 conky > > > > [aweiner@localhost ~]$ ps -f 2520 > > UID PID PPID C STIME TTY STAT TIME CMD > > aweiner 2520 1629 0 16:00 ? S > > 0:00 /bin/bash /home/aweiner/.kde/Autostart/conky_startup.sh > > > > Any ideas on what's happening differently in the autostart case? > > Is there anything illuminating in ~/.xsession-errors ? On most distros > the window manager writes stderr to that file so that you can debug > things like this. > > -Sean >
Thanks Sean and Eric for your replies. I would not have solved this problem on my own. I did not previously know about .xsession-errors. It did indeed pinpoint the problem: "sorry, you must have a tty to run sudo". I googled the message and found a workaround. In the sudoers file there is a line: "Defaults requiretty". This can be commented out. _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Feb 1 - Home Networking Made Simple with Amahi Home Server Mar 7 - March 2012 Meeting - 9th Annivesary of MHVLUG Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef
