[CentOS] How do graphical admin tools requiring root get authentication?

Wed Mar 12 14:18:57 UTC 2014
Samuel Winchenbach <swinchen at gmail.com>

Hi All,

I have created a CentOS 6.5 OpenStack image using kickstart.  I have
noticed that when connecting directly to the Virtual Machine's console
(think connecting directly to the physical machine) all of the
system-config, firewall configuration, application update and install GUI
applications work fine and prompt for root login when executed.  Hoever if
I connect to the VM using xrdp with a tiger-vncserver backend the apps
either do not work, or take several minutes to prompt for the root
password.

Here is a post I made in the forums that has no response:
https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=45307&sid=865afae345fe831c86661f5f264f9021

It looks like my problem may be that when I do a ck-list-sessions the
device/terminal information does not seem to be known:
 Session2:
   unix-user = '500'
   realname = '(null)'
   seat = 'Seat2'
   session-type = ''
   active = FALSE
   x11-display = ''
   x11-display-device = ''
   display-device = ''
   remote-host-name = ''
   is-local = TRUE
   on-since = '2014-03-06T17:23:07.718097Z'
   login-session-id = '4294967295'


I have tried disabling selinux, modifying the startwm.sh script included
with xrdp to launch the session with "ck-launch-session gnome-session".

Neither seem to help.


Does anyone have any idea what might be going, or an explanation of how
authentication works when one of these apps requires root permission?

Thanks!

Sam