Description of problem: Adapting usermode doesn't work nicely if users' home directories are stored on an NFS server and uid/gid 0 is mapped to the anonymous user on the NFS server. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): usermode-1.74-1 How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install an NFS server, map root to the anonymous user 2. Adapt the configuration for any program (like ethereal) and change the user to authenticate from USER=root to USER=<user> 3. launch the program Actual results: The program will be denied access to the X server Expected results: Not sure. I wanted the program to run, but it's probably not easy to fix this (see below). Additional info: The reason this happens is because in the process the pam_xauth.so module tries to merge the .Xauthority file with xauth. Because on the NFS server root is mapped to the anonymous user it cannot always access the user's $HOME/.Xauthority file (if the homedir is chmod 700 for example). pam_xauth.so tries to merge the .Xauthority file from the user it authenticates. I don't know if this is already fixed in FC4 or any of the FC5 releases or that this should be assigned to pam instead.
Fedora Core 3 is now maintained by the Fedora Legacy project for security updates only. If this problem is a security issue, please reopen and reassign to the Fedora Legacy product. If it is not a security issue and hasn't been resolved in the current FC5 updates or in the FC6 test release, reopen and change the version to match. Thank you!
I no longer have access to those machines since I left university.