In this session, if you want to launch a graphical application using the “sudo” command (like “sudo firefox” for instance), the following error will occur:.Let’s assume that you are connected to a remote server using SSH with username “john”.You can also use a single command in order to achieve this!įor instance, here are 2 simple use cases: In order to achieve this, you could manually retrieve X credentials in the su/sudo context by looking up the “xauth list” for the original username and then adding them using “xauth add” to the current context. However, in some cases you may need to start a graphical application like nedit or firefox in a sudo or su context. X11-forwarding mechanism does not allow anyone to use the open display. This is by default not allowed on Unix/Linux systems, because the X11 display connection belongs to the user you used to log with when connecting to your remote SSH server. We receive a lot of emails asking how to keep X11-forwarding working after changing user to root inside a SSH session in MobaXterm.

Mobaxterm x11 forwarding