How to connect to Zellij server from a client in the context of a different login session

[crabdancing]

So, I want to help a friend out with their computer interactively using Zellij. They have a user account, let's say, user. They have a Zellij session open, started via the GUI, and I want to connect to them. The only problem is, when I connect over SSH, switch to the same unix account via sudo -u user -i, and try to zellij attach to their session -- it just fails and reports No active zellij sessions found.. What can I do to get it to work as expected?

[crabdancing]

Note that I have already tried manually setting DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS, but Zellij still reports the same issue.

[giyany]

You would need to login to SSH with the same user as the one running the zellij session.

[Lockszmith-GH]

From your description, you're logging in as user B and running sudo into user A - that's not the same.

If User A is runniing the zellij session.
You will need to ssh into User A and open zellij on the same session name user A is running.

[crabdancing]

So... why does it have to be the same? Is sudo fucking up some of the environment variables? If so,
which ones?

[Lockszmith-GH]

I mean, probably - I've never really researched it.

Can't do it now, but I'll definitly try later (I'm intrigued).

but the way I'll test it:

• SSH into User A, before running zellij, dump the env with env into a file env1
• SSH into User B, dump the env with env into env2
• sudo from User B to User A, dump the env into env2-sudo

and now run some diffs, see if something makes sense.

[giyany]

This is not a topic I'm proficient in, but isn't logging in with a user mean sourcing an environment while sudo is in principle a change of permissions?

[Lockszmith-GH]

I doubt it's down to the env, but I wouldn't put money on it - that's why env needs to be diffed.

by default, sudo doesn't pass the env from the source session, unless specified to do so.
And sudo -i is supposed to create a new login shell, just like SSH does.
So in theory sudo -i should already run correctly, but the problem is zellij's ability to communicate with it's server - it's not identifying it.