[PATCH 0/3] linux: Allow console switching to work without root rights

[Peter Hutterer]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:24:48AM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
> This patch-set makes it possible to run without as non-root without
> -sharevts. With the caveat that the user must specify the vt from which X is
> started as the vt to run on (as both gdm and startx do by default).

I think for startx that's a fedora patch, I don't think that's upstream.

> With this patch-set + my systemd-logind patches I can login as user on a vt,
> and do startx without needing a suid-root bit on my xserver.
> 
> There are only 2 minor issues left with running as non root after this:
> 1) One (harmless) error message about failing to get iopl rights
> 2) Currently my /var/log is writable by the user as which I start x
> 
> Solving 1) is something to do after I've figured out how we want to deal
> with UMS when the xserver is not suid root
> 
> For 2), I'm thinking about just logging to the users home dir, so user hans
> would get a /home/hans/.Xorg.0.log file. Input on this is much appreciated.

I'd be tempted to even skip logging to a file and log to stdout only. That
way whatever launches X can decide how to handle the log output,
specifically with a few minor changes in gdm we could make sure the output
ends up in the journal.

The risk we run with this is that for manually started X servers the log
output may not be available once a bug occurs. But for the usual distro
case, if we get the DMs on board, we'd have everything in the journal.

Cheers,
   Peter