can't edit menus in debian desktop

[coastside]

I use gdm to log in to a gnome desktop in debian linux system. Everything's cool, except I can't edit the menus because I have to be logged in as root. The problem is that gdm doesn't let me log in as root. I can log into a shell as root and do whatever I want. But the gnome desktop is already running as a non-root user. How can I change to root in the gnome desktop for purposes of updating the menus. I know how to use the "su" command, but again, if I do that in a shell it doesn't help. And I can't log out and startx again, because gdm won't let me log in as root (I think this is for security reasons). What's the trick?

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

-
3L
(Long Live Linux).

[littleman]

Here is a shirt howto on modifying menus in debian:
http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/doc/maint/Maintenance-menus.html

As far as gdm goes, change the setting in etc/gdm/gdm.conf to AllowRoot=true.

[Jomboni]

Also, the program to edit Gnome's menus is called gmenu. You can log in as su from a terminal, run gmenu, and edit your menus. Or, considering how dumb it is to make you log in as root to edit menus, set up gmenu to run through suid.