Use pkexec to run emacs in GUI mode with root privileges or any other way to do that

Question

I've recently started learning to use Emacs.

I do not want to run emacs using sudo emacs (lets not ask why), so I tried using pkexec to start emacs with root privileges. However, pkexec emacs starts emacs in terminal mode. How can I solve this?

Or is there any other alternative where I can possibly use emacs to edit files with root privileges.

This is the custom policy:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE policyconfig PUBLIC
"-//freedesktop//DTD polkit Policy Configuration 1.0//EN"
"https://www.freedesktop.org/software/polkit/policyconfig-1.dtd">

<policyconfig>
    <action id="com.ubuntu.pkexec.emacs">
    <description>Run Emacs with root privileges</description>
    <message>
        Authentication is required to run Emacs with root privileges
    </message>
    <icon_name>Emacs</icon_name>

    <defaults>
        <allow_any>auth_admin</allow_any>
        <allow_inactive>auth_admin</allow_inactive>
        <allow_active>>auth_admin</allow_active>
    </defaults>

    <annotate key="org.freedesktop.policykit.exec.path">/usr/bin/emacs</annotate>
    <annotate key="org.freedesktop.policykit.exec.allow_gui">true</annotate>
    </action>
</policyconfig>

Note:

• A similar policy for brackets works fine.
• Emacs starts in GUI mode if I use either emacs or sudo emacs in terminal.

Any help is appreciated.

Emacs version 24.5.1 in ubuntu 16.10

Answer 1

An alternative, to pkexec emacs or sudo emacs, would be to run emacs as normal user and work with tramp-mode to access files.

tramp-mode enables you to open files with root rights using access methods like sudo, su, ssh, sftp and so on, see here.

For example use this C-x C-f //sudo:root@localhost:/etc/group RET to open systems group file.

tramp also enables you to open files on remote hosts (tunneling and multihops are also possible).

For helper functions to reopen an already opened file as root, have a look here.