Non root Xorg

This page describes how an unprivileged user can run Xorg without using suid.

Important
The logind provider does not provide the same level of access as the legacy SUID-enabled Xorg does. The elogind provider allows a locally seated user to be granted access to $TTY and input devices. Users who wish to start X remotely will need to take extra steps to ensure that a seat is given to the user from which they start X, or stay with the legacy behaviour of X with suid.

Requisites

The logind provider

Currently there are two logind providers in Gentoo, systemd and elogind. Users of systemd profile and users of desktop profiles (both systemd and non-systemd ones) will already have a logind interface provided; users of OpenRC with default profile will be required to globally enable the elogind USE flag and update the system with emerge -ND @world. It is also required to re-login after elogind has been enabled, to activate it. If either the systemd or elogind USE flag is enabled on x11-base/xorg-server together with the suid USE flag, instead of installing with suid enabled, x11-base/xorg-server will be installed with suid-wrapper, which will only preserve suid if the graphics driver in use really requires root.

The elogind users are recommended to add elogind to the boot runlevel. While it is not strictly necessary, since elogind can be started upon receiving an event over dbus, it will clash with other services that depend on elogind, like fwupd, resulting in OpenRC trying to start already started elogind and thus failing to do so.

elogind service running

It is required to have elogind started in the boot runlevel so that pam_elogind can communicate with elogind daemon:

root #rc-update add elogind boot

root #/etc/init.d/elogind start

Security issues with running xorg-server as root

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the X.Org X server. Missing input sanitising in X server extensions may result in local privilege escalation if the X server is configured to run with root privileges. These vulnerabilities can result in an attacker accessing confidential information as well as potentially bypassing protections provided by ASLR.

Note
Debian documentation and other online publications released after January 25, 2012 are under the MIT (Expat) License.

Verification

Some popular display managers (like x11-misc/lightdm) don't support an unprivileged user running Xorg.

After a graphical login, the X server should not be running under root but a regular user:

user $ps -fC X

UID          PID    PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
larry       712     711  3 14:56 tty1     00:02:20 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp -keeptty :0

Troubleshooting

Cannot start Xorg as regular user

The majority of problems with running Xorg as a user other than root after switching to elogind come down to issues with PAM. One can confirm that elogind is working by running loginctl user-status. If elogind is running correctly, the output should look something like this:

user $loginctl user-status

user (1000)
         Since: Tue 2020-10-13 12:03:02 CDT; 2h 16min ago
         State: active
      Sessions: *1
        Linger: no
          Unit: user-1000.slice

If instead it shows an error, for example:

user $loginctl user-status

Failed to create bus connection: No such file or directory

or if startx still fails, then it's worth to check:

• Have the configuration files in /etc been updated after updating the system with the new USE flags? (dispatch-conf)
• (elogind users) Is there any trace of pam_elogind.so in /etc/pam.d/system-auth?
• Is the dbus service running?
• (elogind users) Is the elogind service running? (It may be desirable to run rc-update add elogind boot)
• Is regular user added to the video group?

Framebuffer "Permission denied"

If starting Xorg as root works, but not as user, and the log file mentioned in the startx error contains the following line, then user cannot access the raw framebuffer device.

FILE Xorg.0.log

[   108.953] (EE) open /dev/fb0: Permission denied

This can be fixed by adding user to the video group. In order to apply the new permissions, user must log out and log back in.

root #ls -l /dev/fb0

crw-rw----. 1 root video 29, 0 Apr 26 19:39 /dev/fb0

root #usermod -a -G video user

See also

• Xorg — an open source implementation of the X server.
• Xorg/Guide — explains what Xorg is, how to install it, and the various configuration options.
• X server — the main component of the X Window system which abstracts the hardware and provides the foundation for most graphical user interfaces, like desktop environments or window managers, and their applications.