After I login to a server using ssh and try to initiate X11 I got the below error message:

$startx
X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.
xinit: giving up
xinit: server error

by checking the /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config, it shows

allowed_users=console

I am wondering how to fix this issue. I also don't have the root privilege for some setting changes.

It depends on what you are trying to do:

• if you had permissions, at best you would get X running, using the console of the computer which you connected to for its display. You wouldn't get X running on the local machine from which you ran ssh.


• if you logged in on the console, you would have permissions to startx — still on that display.


• if you are trying to run an X application on the server, displaying on your local machine, the way to do this is to have X running on the local machine, and using X forwarding (establishing an authorized connection) run the application via ssh, displaying on your local machine. You do not have to startx on the remote machine for that.

Further reading:

• X Over SSH2 - A Tutorial


• How to forward X over SSH from Ubuntu machine?

For my debian jessie, no session manager, only x11, xorg and mwm (motif window manager), I got this problem only after copying my home folder from another debian jessie host. Turns out that when I moved the ~/.Xsession to a temporary ~/old folder, it corrected the issue.

mv ~/.Xsession ~/old

In addition, I found out that gnu-screen would generate "X: user not authorized to run the x server, aborting." – aanhouden 1 min ago edit

Hope this helps others.

dpkg-reconfigure x11-common

This will work.