next up previous contents
Next: How can I set Up: Other Problems / Questions Previous: Can I have multiple   Contents

Can I run Mahogany as root?

Very simple question: can I run Mahogany on a unix system as the superuser (root)?

Not directly. There are two problems with it:

  1. It is not a good idea for security reasons. In fact, you should not even run X11 as root. Though, we would not dare to impose that on you, if you want to, that is your problem.
  2. The technical reason, and this is why Mahogany does not allow it: The c-client library that we use for accessing mail folders and servers uses the user-Id 0 (root) internally and does not work when called as root. When inquiring why this is so, c-client's author told us that it was bad to read mail as root - he thinks he knows what is good for you. Unless we find an easy way to circumvent that problem, you will not be able to run Mahogany as root as we have no time and desire to re-write the c-client library just for this.
There is a workaround however:

You can forward your email to another user, say ``user1'', by creating a /root/.forward file containing that user's name. Then, run Mahogany through the ``su'' command: ``su user1 -c mahogany''. This will work just fine. If you get an error message about it being unable to access your X11 display, do a ``xhost localhost'' before, which will allow all local users to access your display. All this is not very safe from a security point of view if you don't trust your local machine, but perfectly fine for standalone or dialup boxes.


next up previous contents
Next: How can I set Up: Other Problems / Questions Previous: Can I have multiple   Contents
Charlie & 2001-04-19