XFree86 / XDarwin and change of hostname

[Tabitha McNerney]

On 2/23/07, Daniel J. Luke <dluke at geeklair.net> wrote:
>
> On Feb 23, 2007, at 10:38 AM, Kevin Ballard wrote:
> > I'm not particularly familiar with how X servers work, but I
> > thought that usually to connect to a local X server you set your
> > DISPLAY to :0.0 which makes it connect to localhost.
>
> Because of the design of X, there are potential security issues with
> allowing anyone client to access the X server.
>
> There are different methods for dealing with this (see man 7
> Xsecurity for details).
>
> I think by default, it's set to use the MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE method.
>
> In any event, the .Xauthority file stores the data used to authorize
> the client with the X server and each entry contains the X display
> name (which is the hostname + display number).
>
> All of which means, changing the hostname of a machine would cause
> this to stop working (ie, this is expected behavior).



So from a security standpoint, if one must change the hostname, then one
must also create a new .Xauthority file? I see the .Xauthority file on my
machine (with the hostname that was changed) is not editable with a text
editor (also this is probably to be expected?).

If the hostname must be changed, then X (as in XFree86) must be re-installed
as a MacPort?

TM

--
> Daniel J. Luke
> +========================================================+
> | *---------------- dluke at geeklair.net ----------------* |
> | *-------------- http://www.geeklair.net -------------* |
> +========================================================+
> |   Opinions expressed are mine and do not necessarily   |
> |          reflect the opinions of my employer.          |
> +========================================================+
>
>
>
>
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