How can I run gparted over ssh?

Question

I'm SSHing into my RPi, with X forwarding enabled. I'm trying to run gparted, but it seems to fail for me.

$ gksudo gparted
======================
libparted : 2.3
======================
The program 'gksudo' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAccess (attempt to access private resource denied)'.
  (Details: serial 229 error_code 10 request_code 130 minor_code 5)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

or

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo gparted
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.

(gpartedbin:21437): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: localhost:10.0

If I run plain gparted, I get Root privileges are required for running gparted. in STDOUT, but I also get a dialogue box pop up. I've also run gksudo leafpad, which seems to work fine. How can I run gparted over ssh?

Answer 1

Make sure you have

ForwardX11 yes

in your local /etc/ssh/ssh_config

Now the problem is that when you sudo, you don't have the right credentials in .Xauthority. The -E option preserves your environment

so

$ sudo -E gparted

Answer 2

I had no luck with this:

ssh -X pi@mypi

but this worked:

ssh -Y pi@mypi

Answer 3

gksudo is deprecated now. Having said that, if you're issuing commands manually, you can just use sudo instead.

Set the following options in your ssh_config:

ForwardX11 yes
ForwardX11Trusted yes

The first option alone will work, but keep in mind that untrusted X sessions expire after 20 minutes or so, making you wonder why your GUI apps suddenly stop working.

In order to provide access to the X display to the target user of sudo (typically root), you can copy your connection cookie from /home/pi/.Xauthority to /root/.Xauthority with

sudo xauth add $(xauth list | tail -1)

Avoid running programs with sudo -E, as doing so will make them use your home directory (e.g. /home/pi), so next time you run those programs as a regular user, they will fail to run because their config files are owned by root.