Client Authority File

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

connection-protocol          auth-protocol          auth-data

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 might contain the following entries:

anyhost:0      MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  82744f2c4850b03fce7ae47176e75
localhost:0    MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  82744f2c4850b03fce7ae47176e75
anyhost/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1   82744f2c4850b03fce7ae47176e75  

When the client starts, 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 empty host-based access lists and states that 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 auth-data. The netname is in the following form:

unix.userid@NISdomainname

For example, on host anyhost the .Xauthority file might contain the following entries, where unix.15339@EBB.Sun.COM is the machine-independent netname of the user:

anyhost:0        SUN-DES-1            ”unix.15339@EBB.Sun.COM”
localhost:0      SUN-DES-1            ”unix.15339@EBB.Sun.COM”
anyhost/unix:0   SUN-DES-1            ”unix.15339@EBB.Sun.COM”

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