Client Authority File

The client authority file is .Xauthority. It contains entries of the form:

By default, .Xauthority contains MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 as the auth-protocol, and entries for the local display only as the connection-protocol and auth-data. For example, on host anyhost, the .Xauthority file may contain the following entries:

When the client starts up, an entry corresponding to the connection-protocol is read from .Xauthority, and the auth-protocol and auth-data are sent to the server as part of the connection packet. In the default configuration, xhost returns an empty host-based access list and states that the authorization is enabled.

If you have changed the authorization protocol from the default to SUN-DES-1, the entries in .Xauthority contain SUN-DES-1 as the auth-protocol and the netname of the user as the auth-data. The netname is in the following form:

unix.userid@NISdomainname

For example, on host, anyhost the .Xauthority file may contain the following entries:

where unix.15339@EBB.Eng.Sun.COM is the machine-independent netname of the user.

If you do not know your network name, or machine-independent netname, ask your system administrator.