Re: X Authentication Problem

["David A. Parker" <dparker@utica.edu>]

Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 01:40:28PM -0500, David A. Parker wrote:
> > Kent West wrote:
> > > David A. Parker wrote:
> > > > X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.
> > > > giving up.
> > > > xinit:  No such file or directory (errno 2):  unable to connect to X 
> > > > server
> > > > xinit:  No such process (errno 3):  Server error.
> > > > Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console
> > > >
> > > > I have tried it both with and without the "DISPLAY=:0.0" at the 
> > > > beginning.  Also, "startx" works as root.
> > > I think at this point I'd rename mythtv's home directory and create a 
> > > new blank one (make sure to get the perms correct on the directory), 
> > > and try starting X then to see what happens.
> > Hmmm...
> >
> > As root:
> >
> > # mv mythtv mythtv.BAK
> > # mkdir mythtv
> > # chown mythtv:mythtv mythtv
> > # chmod 0755 mythtv
> > # su - mythtv
> >
> > Then as "mythtv":
> >
> > $ ls -la
> > total 8
> > drwxr-xr-x  2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Mar  7 12:55 .
> > drwxrwsr-x  5 root   staff  4096 Mar  7 12:55 ..
> > $ startx
> > xauth:  creating new authority file /home/mythtv/.Xauthority
> > xauth:  creating new authority file /home/mythtv/.Xauthority
> > Using authority file /home/mythtv/.Xauthority
> > Writing authority file /home/mythtv/.Xauthority
> > Using authority file /home/mythtv/.Xauthority
> > Writing authority file /home/mythtv/.Xauthority
> > X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.
> > xinit:  Server error.
> > Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console
> >
> > I tried this a couple of times and it consistently failed.  The new
> > /home/mythtv/.Xauthority file it created was empty.  I also tried using
> > xauth and mcookie to add new cookies, but it still didn't work:
> >
> > mythtv@lipton:~$ startx
> > X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.
> > xinit:  Server error.
> > Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console
>
> sorry, shoul dhave provided mine for reference
>
> andrew@basement:~$ ls -l / | grep tmp
> drwxrwxrwt  10 root root  5.0K 2007-03-07 10:47 tmp

Sorry I did not get a chance to continue this yesterday, but thanks for 
all of the suggestions.  I found the cause of the problem late last 
night, but I still can't explain it.

The cause appears to be the contents of the ~/.xsession file.  I noticed 
that I was able to log in to kdm as another regular user, and the only 
difference between the two accounts was that "mythtv" had a .xsession 
file and the other user did not.  When I copied mythtv's .xsession to 
the other user's home directory, that account experienced the same 
problems.  The ~/.xsession file for "mythtv" contained two lines:

fvwm &
DISPLAY=:0.0 fvwm-root /home/mythtv/mythtv_startup.png &

The first line starts the fvwm window manager, and the second line 
replaces the background image with a fullscreen MythTV logo.  I tried 
removing the second line, but that did not solve the problem.  Then I 
removed the "&" from the fvwm line and it worked.

The apparent cause of all of this was the fact that the window manager 
was being started in the background.  It's not just fvwm, because I 
tried "twm &" and that failed as well, but just "twm" worked fine.  The 
really strange thing is that this .xsession file hasn't been changed in 
quite some time, and this never caused a problem before.

Thanks to everyone for your advice and suggestions.  Does anyone have 
any ideas about how to make this behave like it used to?

    Thanks!
    Dave

--

Dave Parker
Utica College Department of
Integrated Information Technology Services
Data Processing Office
(315) 792-3229
Registered Linux User #408177