How do I create the .Xauthority file?

Question

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!

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

(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