Arch Linux

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

I'd like to move .Xauthority out of my home directory and the instructions here don't appear to work on my system.

$ export XAUTHORITY="$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR"/Xauthority

Running printenv always seems to show a value of "XAUTHORITY=/tmp/xauth-1000-_0"

I'm using SDDM and I'm curious to know if that's affecting things and what I need to do to move this file.

Any ideas?

Edit: It's not (just) SDDM... booting to console and starting X (Plasma) still produces ~/.Xauthority

Last edited by antnythr (2017-08-25 13:20:49)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,432

Website

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

Where do you set that variable?  You code block suggests you manually entered it in a terminal - this will definitely not work for a long term solution, and could only even have a transient effect if it was entered in a tty prior to X being started from that same tty.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

I'm using ZSH, so I've tried setting the variable in my .zshenv and when that didn't work /etc/zshenv.

When neither of those worked I tried setting the variable in /etc/environment, and that didn't work either.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 70,981

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

startx/xinit should not set the var at all.
SDMM configuration *should* work in /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup but I guess the variable is set by your desktop environment.

And just to be sure: the "$" does not belong anywhere - if you copied that, you just created a bogus statement. (It's merely an indication of a standard promt, saying "this is a shell command")

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

startx/xinit should not set the var at all.
SDMM configuration *should* work in /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup but I guess the variable is set by your desktop environment.

And just to be sure: the "$" does not belong anywhere - if you copied that, you just created a bogus statement. (It's merely an indication of a standard promt, saying "this is a shell command")

I didn't include the "$"

I've looked at Xsetup, but I didn't actually know what to place there.

I'm also confused about SDDM because in SDDM.conf there is: UserAuthFile=
which states: Path to the Xauthority file, relative to the home directory. Default value is ".Xauthority"

So how do you set this to UserAuthFile=/run/user/1000/.Xauthority if it's expecting this file in your home directory? Just setting it like I posted there creates these folders in my home directory.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 70,981

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

*Shrug*
Just try passing a full path or leaving your home directory "../../run/user/1000/.Xauthority"

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

*Shrug*
Just try passing a full path or leaving your home directory "../../run/user/1000/.Xauthority"

That's what I was just about to do lol

I'll let you know how it turns out

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

No luck

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

Apparently there is no way to make this change

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 70,981

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

Take SDDM out of the equation - does it work exporting the variable and launching startx/xinit?

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

Take SDDM out of the equation - does it work exporting the variable and launching startx/xinit?

Nope. Regardless of whether I set XAUTHORITY in ~/.zshenv, /etc/zsh/zshenv, or /etc/environment, printenv always shows "XAUTHORITY=/tmp/xauth-1000-_0"

antnythr

Member

Registered: 2014-08-27

Posts: 36

Re: How do I move .Xauthority? The instructions given don't seem to work

Take SDDM out of the equation - does it work exporting the variable and launching startx/xinit?

Nope. Regardless of whether I set XAUTHORITY in ~/.zshenv, /etc/zsh/zshenv, or /etc/environment, printenv always shows "XAUTHORITY=/tmp/xauth-1000-_0"

Alright, If I disable SDDM and I add

export XAUTHORITY=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/Xauthority

to ~/.zshenv, .Xauthority is appearing in /run/user/1000 like I want it to.

So now the question is if I can make it work with SDDM. At the moment SDDM will hang when I enter my password to log in.

edit: Looking at some of the messages on the SDDM github page it looks like this isn't something you can do yet.

Last edited by antnythr (2017-08-25 22:31:56)