I just installed E17 and did a system update using Synaptic. After rebooting and logging back in with my normal user id (not root) I tried to run Synaptic again. I am getting an error that says 'You must run the program as the root user' and Synaptic won't load. Any ideas?
Hi vmeiste. This is perfectly normal. You always have to run Synaptic as root.
It should just ask for the password and then, you are good to go.
No, I know that. What it is doing is displaying a dialogue box with the error when I try to run the program. The only response button is OK, so it does not let me do anything else. When I click OK it just exits the program and doesn't even load. I've run PCLinuxOS for years and have never seen this before. Something with E17?
Somebody didn't write the command for Synaptic correctly, if it does what you say. As a work-around, open a
terminal, type;
[<you>@localhost ~]$ su <Enter>
enter
root's password and press the
Enter key.
At the
root prompt type;
[root@localhost ~]# synaptic <Enter>
This is from the KDE menu editor, but there should be something like it for e17.

You probably
wouldn't want it to show only in
KDE.


If the
Run as a different user option isn't checked, you get the error you see. On
KDE it doesn't seem to matter that the
Username: is blank, so I guess it
defaults to
root, if no other name is filled in.