gdm as my login manager, I login as user, and I used to call the following after login to copy my Xauth key to my Sun workstations so I that could run things from them, xauth extract - rowan:0.0 | ssh oak xauth merge - rowan is my machine, oak is my Sun server, This no longer works and neither does passing :0.0 or rowan.ece.ul.ie:0.0 (my FQDN)... I don't like using xhost as this causes security problems I would rather not deal with ...
try xauth extract - :0
I think its a bit more difficult than that ... rowan (airlied)% xauth extract - :0 | ssh oak xauth merge - rowan (airlied)% xon oak -debug Xlib: connection to "rowan.ece.ul.ie:0.0" refused by server Xlib: Client is not authorized to connect to Server xterm Xt error: Can't open display: rowan.ece.ul.ie:0
Are there xauth problems with gdm that you know about, Dr. Mike?
I don't know of any issues with xauth. The only problem I've seen isn't really a gdm bug. If you change your hostname while in X (and have an xauth key already), then you cannot create new clients because the hostname doesn't match the xauth record anymore.
Okay that comment about gdm sparked another thought .. I've switched to xdm and it works fine, but gdm doesn't ... If I rm my .Xauthority and log in with xdm I get three keys rowancoax:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx rowan.ece.ul.ie:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx rowan/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx where my machine has 2 netcards, rowancoax and rowan.ece.ul.ie, with gdm I only get the last one the rowan/unix:0 key ... So does this help any?
Dr. Mike -- perhaps gdm should also insert the FQDN(s) when you are logging in?
I too see this problem. I can say that it isn't a problem re:FQDN as my .Xauthority *is* fully qualified. I have checked the obvious, i.e. cookies in .Xauthority vs. /var/gdm/:0.xauth appear the same. I cranked up X server to -auth 4 but it doesn't spill much - I'd like to see what it gets as a cookie.
That should be "-audit 4" of course (It's 2am!).
Doh ! It's obvious when one starts with an empty .Xauthority file. It only contains a *single* entry for the host, i.e. one for the unix sockets but not the TCP connections. Add the entrywith xauth and it works ! A quick look at gdm bugtrack.... and lo ... Gnome ticket report logs - #1396 gdm does not create TCP xauth cookie
will be fixed in the next release.
I have just (25 Aug 1999) received e-mail from Martin K. Petersen <mkp> himself who says; "gdm is broken by design and no longer maintained. It is only supported to the extent that some distributors are willing to patch it. I will ask the bugs.gnome.org maintainer to remove gdm from the system as it confuses people that it is still there. Please try the gdm2 module from CVS. Beta2 is due out this week." Perhaps RedHat should ditch "gdm" and move with "gdm2". It would certainly avoid significant amounts of patching.