.Xauthority file is empty

ssh x11 opensuse xauth

9,243

If the filesystem containing your home directory on the remote server is 100% full or if disk quotas are in effect and you're over your quota, it might be possible to create a new zero-length file but not to write anything into it. This will stop sshd from being able to write a X11 session cookie into the .Xauthority file, causing the X11 forwarding to fail.

Check for these conditions, with commands df -h . and quota, before trying anything more elaborate. If necessary, clear some space, then log out and try again.

9,243

Author by

Prasanna

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Prasanna over 1 year
I have been trying to ssh -X to my cluster running OpenSUSE 11.2. It used to work well for me. But now I get this message:
```
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
Failed to open the X11 display!
```
So I tried to check the ownership and permission of the .Xauthority file using
```
sudo ls -al .Xauthority
```
and I get to see that the file is empty with size 0:
```
-rw------- 1 <my-user-name> users 0 2014-07-31 10:03 .Xauthority
```
When I log in with ssh -Xv

I get the following when i try to open xlock
```
debug1: client_input_channel_open: ctype x11 rchan 3 win 65536 max 16384
debug1: client_request_x11: request from ::1 53267
debug1: channel 1: new [x11]
debug1: confirm x11
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
debug1: channel 1: free: x11, nchannels 2
Error: Can't open display: localhost:10.0
```
How would I fix this?
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  What does echo $XAUTHORITY give?
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  @celtschk That is not set. It gives me nothing.
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  Is X11Forwarding enabled in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the cluster? Also, is UseLogin set to no? (According to sshd_config(5), enabling UseLogin disables X11Forwarding)
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  @celtschk Yes. X11Forwarding is set to "yes" and UseLogin is set to "no"
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  Uppercase "Yes" or lowercase "yes"? It should be the latter.
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  Yes it's in lowercase. I corrected my typo in the comment
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  Is xauth in /usr/bin/? If not, is there an XAuthLocation in sshd_config giving its correct location? Also: Did you try using the -v option of ssh to get more information about what might go wrong?
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  Yes, xauth is present in /usr/bin/. And I have edited my question including -v option.
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  Can you start X11 applications locally from the terminal you're running ssh from?
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  Cluster is present at a remote location for which I need some authorized personnel. Will it make a difference? If so i can request them to try.
- Admin almost 10 years
  
  I mean the local window where you type the ssh command to log into the remote server.