I have been running Redhat-7.1 for six months, but only recently
switched to the newer xfree86 (from 3.3 to 4.0.3). After this upgrade i
could only run startx as user root - attempting to startx from non-root
produced:
PAM authentication failed, cannot start X server.
Perhaps you ... console ownership?
After reading many man pages & scouring the internet & trying everything
that sounded plausible, I eventually resorted to the less plausible, and
found the solution:
touch /var/lock/console/USERNAME
(you do this as root and with your non-root username as USERNAME)
Note: I do not run devfs - the person who mentioned this as a possible
solution said it was only applicable if you did use devfs.
I find it hard to believe that a file whose existence is crucial in the
granting of console authorization would be under /var/lock -- surely it
should be under /etc ??
After two days of frustration, I feel like complaining about this. But
I do not know whom to complain to. Is the problem with PAM or with
Redhat mods to pam or with version 4.0.3 of xfree86 ??
P.S. when i used Xwrapper the error message was slightly different:
Authentication failed, cannot start X server ...
