[Bug 338] X11 forwarding no longer works after upgrading from 2.9.9p2 to 3.4p1

John R. Jackson jrj at gandalf.cc.purdue.edu
Fri Jul 12 23:18:14 EST 2002


>The odd looking code about explicitly setting xauth_path to
>/usr/openwin/bin/xauth is bacause it first finds an xauth that
>is in a directory that ia symbolic link to /usr/openwin

So?  What's wrong with that?

If I had specifically installed X11R6 on my Solaris system and was using
that, the code would ignore the "correct" X11R6 xauth it found in favor
of /usr/openwin/bin.  That's seems wrong.

Put another way, if /usr/openwin/xauth exists, why bother searching
for xauth at all?  The old code is going to force it to that anyway.
It might has well have been:

  if test -x /usr/openwin/bin/xauth ; then
    xauth_path="/usr/openwin/bin/xauth"
  else
    ...
    AC_PATH_PROG(xauth_path, xauth, , $TestPath)
  fi

Seems to me the code should trust the builder to have set up PATH properly
(just one of the bajillion things you're expected to know if you run
./configure yourself).  If it finds the "wrong" xauth, the builder needs
to either change PATH or use --with-xauth.  I have to do that all the
time (and expect to need to) with other packages that find things I have
symlinked out of my own home directory ~/bin.

Note that this is a different case than the original problem of not
finding xauth at all when the code should have.

>Tim Rice

JJ



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