Re: root X clients from ssh -X ...su root shell get "wrong authentication" error

From: Darren Dunham (ddunham_at_redwood.taos.com)
Date: 10/09/03 

Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 17:24:18 GMT

George Young <gry@ll.mit.edu> wrote:
> [openssh-3.5p1, SuSE Linux 8.2]
> I use:
> ssh -X -l george remotehost

> to connect to a remote machine where I need to work. X clients work
> fine. But when I "su" to root and try to run emacs, I get:

> 3901: X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
> Connection lost to X server `localhost:11.0'

In general this means that your root shell cannot read the
authentication tokens. Is your home directory on an NFS filesystem?
That's the only common case I can think of where root cannot read your
local user's .Xauthority file.

> What's the best way to deal with this? I can do "xhost +" on my local
> machine, but that's grossly insecure...
> Is there some command I can run on the remote machine that will extend
> the X authentication to my root login?

You need your root shell to be able to access the same tokens. If it
can't read your root .Xauthority, then you may want to copy them to
/tmp/.Xauthority.whatever, make the permissions secure, then set the
XAUTHORITY env in your root shell to that file. 

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham@taos.com
Unix System Administrator                    Taos - The SysAdmin Company
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
         < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

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