gedit is not opening as root user

[praveenpj]

praveen@milos:~$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt.conf
[sudo] password for praveen:

** (gedit:4331): WARNING **: Command line `dbus-launch --autolaunch=32635d81c49028f93a9356cb00000008 --binary-syntax --close-stderr' exited with non-zero exit status 1: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.\n
Cannot open display:
Run 'gedit --help' to see a full list of available command line options.

[pkadeel]

use

gksu gedit /path/to/file

[Wim Sturkenboom]

I would say

gksudo gedit /path/to/file

[snowpine]

I recommend:

sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf

or

sudo vi /etc/apt/apt.conf

[vasa1]

Recommending vi or nano is all well and good but what makes me concerned is why OP wants to edit /etc/apt/apt.conf in the first place. I've been using Ubuntu for a little over a year and haven't had the need to do so.

[Morbius1]

Just so we all don't get into a fight over this, gksu and gksudo are the same thing in debian:

ls -l /usr/bin/gksudo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Apr 30 2012 /usr/bin/gksudo -> gksu

[Wim Sturkenboom]

According to the manpage, that implies that su and sudo are the same

But thanks for clearing that up for me; never new that.

[dcstar]

Recommending vi or nano is all well and good but what makes me concerned is why OP wants to edit /etc/apt/apt.conf in the first place. I've been using Ubuntu for a little over a year and haven't had the need to do so.

Probably because another misguided "HOWTO" somewhere just lists commands that people blindly follow. The interesting thing about the people who continually follow these things is that their systems invariably develop all sorts of strange problems that never EVER seem seem to occur in systems that people treat correctly.

They then come to places like this asking for help with now non-standard systems that can be so fundamentally broken that a total reinstall is the only solution (keep reading the posts in this forum if you have any doubts.....).

Funny world, innit?

[dcstar]

Just so we all don't get into a fight over this, gksu and gksudo are the same thing in debian:

Arrggghhhh!

su and sudo are different! gksu and gksudo are different for the exact same reason - they are run in different User environments:

"Su switches you to the root user account and requires the root account’s password. Sudo runs a single command with root privileges – it doesn’t switch to the root user or require a separate root user password."

http://www.howtogeek.com/111479/htg-...tween-sudo-su/

[stinkeye]

Arrggghhhh!

su and sudo are different! gksu and gksudo are different for the exact same reason - they are run in different User environments:

"Su switches you to the root user account and requires the root account’s password. Sudo runs a single command with root privileges – it doesn’t switch to the root user or require a separate root user password."

http://www.howtogeek.com/111479/htg-...tween-sudo-su/

In my quantal install /usr/bin/gksudo links to /usr/bin/gksu.