On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 15:44:51 +0000, fxkl4...@protonmail.com wrote: > i log in to x session as user1 on host1 > from within a xterm i want to change to user2 on host1 and run x programs > the current way i do this is ssh user2@host1
I'm assuming you mean "ssh -X", or that you've configured the ssh command to use this option automatically. This is a perfectly good way to do it. > does using ssh on the same host use encryption Yes. > is there another way to do this Yes, but the other ways are *far* more complicated, especially when neither user1 nor user2 is root. The issue is that in order to authenticate yourself to the X server, you present a token, known as a "magic cookie". Your magic cookie is stored in a file in your home directory, which by default only you can read. All of the programs that you run as yourself can read this file and therefore present the magic cookie on demand. If user2 is root, you can set an environment variable so that root reads your magic cookie file, because root can (typically) read every file on the system. However, when user2 is *not* root, it has no way to read your magic cookie. So you need to arrange for some means of conveying this token to the second user account. None of them are simple. You're really better off just continuing to use ssh -X user2@localhost. It does exactly what you want.
