This is an issue I was able to resolve myself over the course of a few days. I am putting this here as record of how I resolved and issue where myrlyn-sudo/root myrlyn was not able to display for me out of the box on my install of TumbleWeed with XFCE.
Out of the box with only a few extra banal packages installed (Steam, some flatpaks, the like) I was not able to initialize root myrlyn from the whisker menu.
I was also not able to start it (myrlyn-sudo) from the terminal; however I was able to start read-only user mode myrlyn.
The log file contents follow:
2026-06-04 09:35:03.671 [19315] Logger.cc:123 openLogFile(): – Log Start –
2026-06-04 09:35:03.671 [19315] main.cc:169 logVersion(): myrlyn-1.0.0 built with Qt 6.11.0
2026-06-04 09:35:03.675 [19315] [Qt] could not connect to display
2026-06-04 09:35:03.675 [19315] [Qt] From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platfo>
2026-06-04 09:35:03.675 [19315] [Qt] Could not load the Qt platform plugin “xcb” in “” even though it was found.
2026-06-04 09:35:03.675 [19315] [Qt] This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initi>
2026-06-04 09:35:03.675 [19315] [Qt] Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscree>
2026-06-04 09:35:03.675 [19315] Logger.cc:381 qt_logger(): FATAL: Could not connect to the display.
2026-06-04 09:35:03.675 [19315] Logger.cc:388 qt_logger(): – Exiting –
At first a found a forum post here that recommended installing the sudo-policy-wheel-auth-self package to solve a similar issue with someone else, however that did not work for me.
Eventually, I searched for issues relating to Qt being unable to connect to displays on XFCE and came across a post in another forum where someone stated root does not have default capability to display on a display of a user in X. The recommended installing and configuring xhost to give root such permission, and this worked for me.
I’m half tempted to try this on a virgin install of Tumbleweed with XFCE to see if I can replicate, but this was also about 3 days ago so I don’t know about attempting to replicate the exact circumstances. Still, I post this for anyone in the future that may have this issue like me, and for record of a possible bug? undesired interaction? need for xhost? but just the hope that it might help.
If I start Myrlyn as normal user it pops up a Window named Myrlyn Password asking for the password for root, so no reason, at least for me, to start Myrlyn as root.
Yes, also for me root does not have a display set.
Apologies, I should say the error log that I got occured: when I ran the myrlyn app out of the whisker menu (which just executes the command myrlyn-sudo), I ran myrlyn-sudo in CLI, I ran sudo myrlyn-sudo in CLI, when I su - into root and tried myrlyn-sudo and sudo myrlyn-sudo, I forget if I tried running the regular myrlyn (which would normally open it in read only mode in regular user mode) in CLI as root. If I did it didn’t work. Nothing did for me until I installed and performed the xhost modification. Specifically xhost +SI:localuser:root
Of course this doesn’t work; this is why I wrote myrlyn-sudo and all that documentation about root privileges and keeping the environment. There is even a pinned issue about this:
Simply use myrlyn-sudo. For some users sudo -E myrlyn also works, but that depends on your exact sudo configuration.
Ahhhh I see now. My mistake. I am unfamiliar with git and reading through and navigating it. Something I will need to fix in the future. I should have been running myrlyn-askpass to, so far as I can tell, pass the password along to the multiple components that require the authorization without provoking the display authorization conflict too early.
I think the biggest thing that prevented me from discovering this is searching through multiple search engines for “myrlyn could not connect to display” did not direct me to what the appropriate action would be. I don’t think I see a description of how the error specifically manifests via command line feedback or error log examples on the github issue report either and I might have wondered if I was in the right place. In any scenario, it is apparent that I need to get familiar with git despite my apprehension Thank you for the learning experience! I do rather like myrlyn now having used it!
Thank you for the learning experience! I do rather like myrlyn now having used it!