13.1 has problems forwarding X11 as root

On my Mac Pro (Mavericks), on 12.3, I ssh into my OpenSUSE machine and do su, and then I can do any X11 thing as root. But on 13.1, it works for the first app, but if I launch another (some time later), I get:
jarfx:/home/jar/Downloads # firefox &
[1] 25501
jarfx:/home/jar/Downloads #
(process:25501): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion ‘sys_page_size == 0’ failed
Error: cannot open display: localhost:10.0
Sometimes it wants to use 11:0

Has something replaced su in 13.1 to forward X successfully?

On openSUSE you cannot use “su” to run GUI programs as root. You have to use “su -”, or better use the tools designed for this purpose: kdesu, gnomesu, or xdg-su.

And have you supplied the -X parameter to ssh? Then it should work.

And you shouldn’t run firefox as root anyway.

For sure I use -X and -Y in ssh. X11 works initially, and then stops. X11 also stops if I run as myself.

I was logged in as root using just su. xterm launched. Then the following happens:
xterm -sb &
[2] 25671
jarfx:/home/jar # exit
exit
jar@jarfx:~> kdesu
kdesu: cannot connect to X server localhost:10.0
jar@jarfx:~>

Also:
jarmac:~ jar$ ssh -X 192.168.1.70
Last login: Tue Nov 26 11:25:33 2013 from 192.168.1.11
Have a lot of fun…
jar@jarfx:~> kdesu
kdesu: cannot connect to X server localhost:11.0

It’s hard to tell what is happening, with this little information.

To test, I just did:


nwr2:rickert 1% ssh -AX nwro
Last login: Tue Nov 26 15:50:18 2013 from nwr2.cs.niu.edu
Have a lot of fun...
nwro:rickert 1% ( xterm & )
nwro:rickert 2% ( xterm & )
nwro:rickert 3%

The first command logged me into a remote machine (at my office). Then I opened two xterm sessions. Both are open as I write this. Finally, from one of those xterm sessions, I did


nwro:rickert 3% ( xclock & )
nwro:rickert 4%

and the xclock is running nicely.

From one of those sessions, I did:


nwro:rickert 5% netstat -an | grep 60
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:6010          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      
tcp        0      0 ::1:6010                :::*                    LISTEN      
tcp        0      0 ::1:6010                ::1:44113               ESTABLISHED 
tcp        0      0 ::1:6010                ::1:44111               ESTABLISHED 
tcp        0      0 ::1:44112               ::1:6010                ESTABLISHED 
tcp        0      0 ::1:44111               ::1:6010                ESTABLISHED 
tcp        0      0 ::1:44113               ::1:6010                ESTABLISHED 
tcp        0      0 ::1:6010                ::1:44112               ESTABLISHED 
unix  2       ]         DGRAM                    8260   /var/lib/named/dev/log
unix  3       ]         STREAM     CONNECTED     7601   
unix  3       ]         STREAM     CONNECTED     22560  

showing the X connections.

Hmm, my “ssh_config” has


ForwardX11Trusted yes

.
which I think is the opensuse default but not the openssh default. My recollection is that, without trusted forwarding, the ability to authenticate to the X-server times out after a while.

In any case, I am not seeing anything different in 13.1 from 12.3. I will note, however, that the distributed “sshd_config” changed. Perhaps if you upgraded, you did not get those changes and maybe they are needed.

A second session in another terminal window did su - and successfully started yast2. It always works at first, but then stops, so it can’t be the ssh configuration. But now it is working with no changes…