Gtk-WARNING**: cannot open display (Airsnort)

Proletariat · n00b Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Posts: 3

I'm pretty sure this is a permissions issue, but I have been trying to figure it out for hours now, and I can't find anything similar, so I hope someone out there can help. I have Airsnort installed in KDE (which is working fine as "user"), and the airsnort GUI was working fine from both user and root logins, but the application crashed, I terminated, and now when I attempt to start from a root login, I get the following error:

(airsnort:11183): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
~ #

So when I drop down to user, the GUI runs, but I get the following error:

SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied

Anyway, I checked the xauth list for both root and user xauth for root was blank, so I copied the .Xauthority from user to /root/ because it was small anyway, but that didn't solve the problem. I don't believe I changed anything else, but it appears that root doesn't have the rights to run the X app, while user doesn't have the rights to use the wireless interface (ath0 or wifi0, I'm not sure which, yet). Can someone give me a hint as to what to do next to set these permissions straight?

Thanks in advance.

Proletariat · n00b Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Posts: 3

I neglected to add a few details. It should be noted that the additional /dev/null error started occurring only after I updated the driver to the most recent madwifi drivers as suggested on these Aircrack pages:

http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=install_drivers

http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=madwifi-ng#usage-tips

Anyway, here is the actual error: