root user: copy to clipboard, not pasteable outside Turbo #70

grahamperrin · 2024-02-09T04:59:50Z

grahamperrin
Feb 9, 2024

Using editors/turbo, the port to FreeBSD, in Konsole.

If I run turbo as myself: no problem.

If I su - (become the superuser) before a run:

copy and paste work as expected within Turbo
what I copy to the clipboard within Turbo is not on the clipboard outside Turbo.

% uname -aKU ; pkg iinfo kde5 konsole ^turbo$
FreeBSD mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd 15.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT main-n268104-d04abb05375d GENERIC-NODEBUG amd64 1500013 1500013
kde5-5.27.10.23.08.4_2
konsole-23.08.4_1
turbo-g20230621
%

Re: runtime requirements https://github.com/magiblot/tvision?tab=readme-ov-file#build-linux-runtime,

% pkg iinfo xclip xsel
xclip-0.13.82_1
xsel-conrad-1.2.0_2
% pkg rquery %o xsel-conrad
x11/xsel-conrad
%

https://www.freshports.org/x11/xclip/#message no package message (I assume, nothing required after installation).

x11/xsel-conrad

Access X selection from command line

https://www.freshports.org/x11/xsel-conrad/#message no package message.

I see these, but can't tell whether they're relevant:

magiblot · 2024-02-09T18:52:56Z

magiblot
Feb 9, 2024
Maintainer

Hi Graham!

In X11 desktop environments, clipboard interaction is done through xsel or xclip, which are X11 clients. For them to be able to connect to the X11 server, the DISPLAY environment variable must be properly defined.

When you run a terminal, the command-line shell properly inherits the DISPLAY variable. This also works when using sudo. However, the su command with the - option clears environment variables, as explained in its manpage:

       -, -l, --login
           Start the shell as a login shell with an environment similar to a real login:

           •   clears all the environment variables except TERM and variables specified by --whitelist-environment

Which results in the DISPLAY variable not being set inside the superuser subshell.

Therefore, you have to either drop the - option (if you don't need it) or add the -w DISPLAY option when running su.

Cheers.

3 replies

grahamperrin Feb 10, 2024
Author

Thanks, now I see that Turbo does work as expected with sudo.

… or add the -w DISPLAY option when running su.

No -w in su(1) at https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=su&sektion=1&manpath=freebsd-release, am I missing something?

If su - is followed by DISPLAY set to :0, should that work?

magiblot Feb 10, 2024
Maintainer

Oops, you are right, my bad. The -w option is GNU-specific and it isn't available on FreeBSD.

Yes, setting DISPLAY to :0 manually will work in most cases, since DISPLAY usually gets that value. But one example of a situation where this wouldn't work is when using X11 forwarding via SSH, since DISPLAY may get a different value in the remote shell session.

So a generic and portable way to run su - while preserving the DISPLAY variable could be:

su - -c "export DISPLAY=$DISPLAY; \$SHELL"

magiblot Feb 10, 2024
Maintainer

Additionally, if your system disallows graphical applications being run as root, as described in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48833451/no-protocol-specified-when-running-a-sudo-su-app-on-ubuntu-linux, you will have to run the following before su:

xhost si:localuser:root

Cheers.

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