xauth and 2.1

[John Patton <patton66@home.com>]

I'm running potato with XFree86 3.3.6, and just upgraded to
kde 2.1. The problem the I'm having is that xauth suddenly
doesn't work anymore... in root's .bashrc file I have the
following line:

  xauth -f ~/.Xauthority merge /home/$USER/.Xauthority

This had allowed me to run x applications after using su...
but now it just doesn't work. Anybody have any clue as to
why upgrading to 2.1 would change this, or how to fix it?
I'm at kind-of a loss here.

Thanks.

-- 
John Patton                      patton66@home.com
Get my GnuPG public key: finger john@24.22.215.225

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." 
- Frank Lloyd Wright