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I don't have a .Xauthority file in my home folder. I want to create it, please tell me the steps to do so in ubuntu 10.10.

Thank You!

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  • Maybe it would help, if you tell us why you want/need to create this file.
    – htorque
    Jan 17, 2011 at 12:39

2 Answers 2

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In Ubuntu 10.10 there's no longer a ~/.Xauthority file. Instead you'll find the equivalent in

/var/run/gdm/auth-for-<USER>-<RANDOM_CHARACTERS>/database

which will be re-created with new random characters on every session start. You can get its name via the $XAUTHORITY environment variable.

If you need a ~/.Xauthority file to be present, I guess you can simply create a symbolic link to $AUTHORITY on every session start:

  1. Open System > Preferences > Startup Applications

  2. Click on Add :

    • Name: Xauthority
    • Command: /bin/bash -c 'ln -s -f "$XAUTHORITY" ~/.Xauthority'
    • Comment: Creates a symbolic link from ~/.Xauthority to $XAUTHORITY

    and add the entry by clicking on Add.

  3. Now every time you log in, it should create the link to the current authority file.

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  • On my 10.10, there is no ~/.Xauthority by default.
    – loevborg
    Jan 17, 2011 at 10:38
  • @loevborg: Thanks, I totally missed that. Updated my answer.
    – htorque
    Jan 17, 2011 at 12:52
  • Thanks a lot guys problem is solved, actually problem was setting the wrong ENV variable in the script for $DISPLAY
    – Parimal N
    Jan 17, 2011 at 13:15
  • 3
    On my 12.04, there's still an ~./Xauthority file...
    – Cerin
    Feb 3, 2014 at 5:21
  • I'm unsure if this answer is correct anymore. I can say that as of April 2018 my Ubuntu 16.04 still expects to have an ~./Xauthority file
    – Gabriel Fair
    Apr 20, 2018 at 11:07
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(there indeed appears to be .Xauthority files in Ubuntu 14.10, so I don't know, per the accepted answer, if they went away and came back?)

Probably solved a long time ago but for completeness, when you ssh to a remote system, use:

ssh -X user@remote

You will get a complaint that the .Xauthority file did not exist and also find it was just created. This is dependent some settings in /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

X11Forwarding yes 
X11DisplayOffset 10 
X11UseLocalhost yes

Refer to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1863739 where I was able to confirm my own experience with this errant error.

While you are checking / updating /etc/ssh/sshd_config make sure root login is disallowed, just a good practice:

PermitRootLogin no
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