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Possible Duplicate:
What is the difference between “gksudo nautilus” and “sudo nautilus”?

I have tiny script that I want it to run on start-up, but it needs sudo privileges so I use gksudo for the job. but it fails. (it works correctly using sudo.) Is there any difference between sudo and gksudo beside the inteface?

BTW: this is the tiny script I mentioned:

#!/bin/bash

cat /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight|if read state; then \
    echo $((1-$state)) | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight; fi;
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  • 1
    As you might have guessed, I'm total newbie!
    – Untitled
    Jul 15, 2012 at 14:59
  • See this question askubuntu.com/q/11760/61218
    – Anwar
    Jul 15, 2012 at 15:04
  • Thank you. I've seen it. But I don't see how $HOME parameter affects my code.
    – Untitled
    Jul 15, 2012 at 15:20
  • @fossfreedom I don't think this is an exact duplicate: this question has an issue similar to mine: my script fails with gksudo, but works with sudo, whereas the other does not involve scripts. I am not a total newbie, but I don't see how my script is affected by anything discussed in the other question.
    – sage
    Aug 6, 2012 at 21:07
  • comment by user azernik in invalid answer below should be the accepted answer
    – Miguel Mota
    May 12, 2017 at 21:59

1 Answer 1

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The main difference is as follows :

gksudo : is used to run graphical (GUI) applications as root
sudo : is used to run command line applications as root

The reason your script won't work with gksudo is because you can't run a GUI without X running.

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    And why? I'm a typical dumb user and saw that typing "sudo" is just enough to run even graphical applications with root rights. So I use sudo and save two letters of typing. Except if you can convince me why I should type two more letters ;)
    – Ray
    Jan 27, 2015 at 10:30
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    Because the answer is wrong. gksudo is used to pop up the password prompt in a GUI window, no matter whether the application is GUI or CLI. sudo, similarly, asks for the password at the terminal instead of in a GUI window, regardless of the type of application being run. Sometimes, in scripts that don't run in an interactive terminal, gksu is the easiest way to get a user-entered password straight to sudo.
    – azernik
    May 28, 2015 at 22:59
  • 5
    why so many votes on a wrong answer....
    – Krypton
    Jan 26, 2017 at 18:40
  • 2
    because down-vote costs reputation :)
    – HongboZhu
    Mar 9, 2017 at 11:06
  • xenial was last LTS with the gksu package containing gksudo and gksu. For historical interest, one thing I think it may have done differently is not to change certain gui/gnome files in places like ~/.gtk3 to root ownership.
    – Jack Wasey
    Mar 21, 2020 at 9:02

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