Stumped: Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

[jamesm]

Collins Richey wrote:
> For grins, I just put up a kubuntu 5.04 on my older PC Since I was
> willing to let ubuntu take over the harddrive, this was the simplest,
> most painless install I have ever done. In practically no time I had a
> running system including printer!!  and working nvidia card!! After
> tinkering a bit with the apt-get sources, I put up IceWM and am
> running that almost well.
>
> I had some unplesant lockups with kynaptic, so I put up synaptic. Now
> I'm stuck, and google seems to provide no answers. Synaptic must run
> as root, so I did
>
> 1. xhost +localhost
> 2. export DISPLAY=localhost:0,0
> 3. sudo su -
> 4. synaptic &
>
> I get the error Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:, and I'm unable
> to find an answer. There are lots of reported problems, but no
> answers.
>
> Your help would be appreciated.
>
> --
> Collins Richey
>       Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code ... If you write
>       the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not
>       smart enough to debug it.
>              -Brian Kernighan
>
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>   

I have the same problem.

I think it's because the X session is owned by the logged in user or 
some such.