.serverauth

[balanga]

Any suggestion for getting rid of .serverauth.* files which seem to proliferate on my system after using xorg?

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Get out of X and delete them. They're only used for X. If you have more than one it's cause X didn't shutdown properly.

 

[balanga]

Get out of X and delete them. They're only used for X. If you have more than one it's cause X didn't shutdown properly.

What I was looking for is a preferred way of deleting them automatically...

Can I put something in .xinit.rc ?

 

[sic_101]

Quick & dirty:

echo "rm -f ~/.serverauth.*" >> .shrc
, if you use 'sh'; otherwise type ".cshrc" for 'csh' & 'tcsh' or ".bashrc" for 'bash' instead of ".shrc".

 

[SirDice]

Funny, asked AI about serverauth, it directed me to a thread here on the forums, and one of my own posts. Thread's 14 years old though.

N

Thread 'xauth: file /home/niatross/.serverauth.18249 does not exist'

Nov 27, 2012

I have a bunch of ".serverauth.<number>" files in my home directory and receive the following error everytime I execute "startx":

xauth: file /home/niatross/.serverauth.18249 does not exist

Why are these files created in my home directory and how do I resolve the error (above)?

• Niatross
• Replies: 8
• Forum: Display Servers

Anyway, they get created when you startx and are removed when exited cleanly. Either your X session isn't terminated cleanly (crashes perhaps?) or you tried to start multiple sessions. You shouldn't have a bunch of them left over.

 

[sic_101]

Afaik, it's like the 'client-key' of the MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 or XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1: Xsecurity

 

[balanga]

I'm assuming that these files stay because startx does not exit cleanly.

 

[balanga]

Afaik, it's like the 'client-key' of the MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 or XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1: Xsecurity

Is there any way to disable this cookie?

 

[SirDice]

I'm assuming that these files stay because startx does not exit cleanly.

You may have had some driver issues in the past, if you haven't deleted them yet, look at their timestamps. If they're old they may just have been leftovers from the past. Like drhowarddrfine said, simply delete them. Then keep an eye on it, they really shouldn't multiply, they should get cleaned up correctly. If not, it may be a symptom of some other issue.

 

[sic_101]

Is there any way to disable this cookie?

It's in the ~/.Xauthority. Never done it and I wouldn't go that way, but I think you could delete it and authenticate via xhost. I don't think it's worth it and it would be better to debug.