How to recover missing serverauth so user can startx?

x11 xorg login startup

28,075

I had a similar problem. To fix this, I realized I wasn't using groupinstall correctly. I did a sudo yum grouplist in order to identify the KDE graphical package I needed. Then I did sudo yum groupinstall KDE Desktop and the GUI started properly.

28,075

Joe

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Joe over 1 year
I've been using PCLinuxOS. All was OK until the Hard Drive had a bad block. After some fsck repair, from the shell, I tried to startx:
```
xauth: file /home/joe/.serverauth.2052 does not exist.
authentication failed - cannot start X server. 
```
I noticed root has a .serverauth cookie and can startx it ok, but I don't know how to fix X access for the user. The 80gb HD is failing so I've decided to stop try to login, only accessing it from a live cd. Case closed.
- Mark Plotnick almost 9 years
  
  Maybe /home/joe is no longer owned by or writable by joe. What is the output of ls -ld /home/joe ?
- Joe almost 9 years
  
  @mark-plotnick drwxr-xr-x 119 joe joe 4096 May 20 19:09 /home/joe
- Mark Plotnick almost 9 years
  
  OK, problem is somewhere else. Will look at my copy of pclinuxos later.
- Mark Plotnick almost 9 years
  
  Maybe /usr/bin/Xwrapper lost its setuid permission. It should be rwsr-xr-x. If that's not it, please post any error messages you see on the console or in /home/joe/.xsession-errors. It would also be interesting if you could create a brand new user and see whether X starts for it.
- Joe almost 9 years
  
  Thx Mark, I don't have a '/usr/bin/Xwrapper' and '/home/joe/.xsession-errors' is empty.
- G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' almost 9 years
  
  It would appear that you have accidentally created two accounts. You should use the contact form and select “I need to merge user profiles” to have your accounts merged. In order to merge them, you will need to provide links to the two accounts. For your information these are unix.stackexchange.com/users/116100/joe and unix.stackexchange.com/users/117261/joe. You’ll then be able to edit and comment on this question.
- Mark Plotnick almost 9 years
  
  OK, either you have an old distro that doesn't have Xwrapper, or it's missing. If you run, as root, rpm -V -f /usr/bin/X, are there any errors?