Failed to connect to the D-Bus session daemon: /bin/dbus-lau

[TomK]

Hi,

Is there a way to run vlc under a user account when X is running under the root account? (I'm aware of all the arguments against running anything under root). Is there a way I can get VLC to connect with the root owned X or would I have to explicitly login as a non privilidged user? What would be my options here?

Naturally, it fails because X is owned by root:

[root@tom ~]# su - tom -c 'vlc'
VLC media player 1.0.6 Goldeneye
[0xa019bb0] inhibit interface error: Failed to connect to the D-Bus session daemon: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: No protocol specified
Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.

[0xa019bb0] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x9f6f088] main libvlc error: interface "inhibit,none" initialization failed
No protocol specified
[0xa014578] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x9f6f088] main libvlc error: interface "globalhotkeys,none" initialization failed
[0x9f6f088] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
No protocol specified
[0xa014988] qt4 interface error: Could not connect to X server
No protocol specified
[0xa014988] skins2 interface error: Cannot open display
[0xa014988] skins2 interface error: cannot initialize OSFactory
Remote control interface initialized. Type `help' for help.
quit
quit: returned 0 (no error)
status change: ( stop state: 0 )
status change: ( quit )
[root@tom ~]#

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You need to give the user permission to read and write the X11 socket (usually /tmp/.X11-unix/X0) and read the cookie file (~/.Xauthority).