Comments on: Get remote X Windows working in Ubuntu Karmic

By: Ben Hyde

Ben Hyde — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:38:21 +0000

I am not absolutely certain this is correct, but it has worked for me.

The problem I wanted to solve was to ssh from my laptop to a ubuntu server and then invoke emacsclient to obtain a x window’s frame on my lap top served up from the emacs running on the ubuntu server. The xauth inside emacs is the one into which I needed to add the xauth credentials. The following worked, at least once

This script resides on the ubuntu server is run after you ssh to the server, forwarding your
laptop’s X display.

#!/bin/bash

# First we need to add to xauth of the server emacs
# permission to throw up windows on our X server.
# But .Xauthorization accumlates so we have to auth
# more than you'd think.
xauth -f ~/.Xauthority list | grep -v ':0' | while read foo; do
  emacsclient -e "(shell-command \"xauth add $foo\")"
done

# Ok, now we should now be able to connect.
emacsclient -c

Thanks for the hint!

By: Joel J. Adamson

Joel J. Adamson — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:39:22 +0000

It works!

By: Joel J. Adamson

Joel J. Adamson — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:34:16 +0000

Howdy,

I’ve been working on this same problem too. I submitted an Emacs
bug(#5434) and was given this explanation by one of the respondents:

,—-
|
| > Okay, I’ll try that, but a quick question: should an xauth problem result
| > in failures for every X application I try to run? Other applications
| > (other than emacsclient) run just fine.
|
| There is a difference. When you start other clients, you do it from
| the shell started by the ssh login process. When you do emacsclient
| -c it only tells your emacs daemon to open a frame on your DISPLAY.
| The emacs daemon is not started from your ssh shell.
|
| Try starting another X client from a shell not related to the ssh
| shell with the ssh-forwarded display (localhost:10) and see what you
| get. You should get permission denied. But your Emacs daemon may
| have other displays opened, that can influence matters also.
`—-

All my machines (two Fedora 12, one Ubuntu Karmic Koala) have the
newest gnome, and I confirm the same bizarre xauth locations as you
do.

I’m at least glad I’m not the only one!

Joel

By: Gregory Grubbs

Gregory Grubbs — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:28:25 +0000

@erikr, I have logged on to several Linux machines to determine their default Xauthority database location, using xauth -v. On Debian machines, I always get ~/.Xauthority. I get that result even on a server that has been upgraded to Karmic, but which does not have Gnome. On my laptop, however, I get /var/run/gdm/auth-for-gregj-3sy6gB/database. That path changes every time I log in, with different salt. Since everything else looks to your home .Xauthority file, this causes your emacsclient session to fail to authenticate.

I might try messing around with setting the XAUTHORITY environment variable, but I’m not sure that would work for Gnome.

By: erikr

erikr — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:29:40 +0000

Greg, I have this same problem, too. Is this xauth stuff really the “official” solution? I unfortunately know nothing about xauth.

I can ssh to my remote box with X forwarding and run “xeyes” just fine, and even emacs runs fine. My only problem is when I run emacsclient and try to create a new frame, I get the same error as you… I will try your solution! Thank you!

P.S. Everything did work fine until the upgrade to karmic…