Alternative to uninstalling and reinstalling possibly broken macports & xorg installation

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 27, 2020, at 06:28, Phil V wrote:

> Hello! On a fresh install of Catalina 10.15.5 I attempted to install
> macports and xorg.

Do you mean installing the MacPorts xorg port, or something else?


> Possibly I may have not installed XCode fully
> before running the macports installer, and this *might* be the cause
> of errors I've been getting. I am bringing this up to the list as the
> macports website says, "uninstalling MacPorts is a drastic step and,
> depending on the issue you are experiencing, you may not need to do
> so. If you are unsure, ask on the macports-users mailing list first."
> 
> Thank you for any advice.

Based on what you've written, I don't believe that uninstalling and reinstalling MacPorts would help, or at least would not be the most efficient way to solve the problem.


> HISTORY
> I received some error messages during the installation process, (now forgotten).
> When I attempted to run port, there was a problem with the PATH, which
> I had to manually fix.
> Later it appeared that I still needed to approve the XCode license.
> This made me wonder whether I had completely installed XCode at the
> time I had run the macports installer.

Not having had Xcode or the command line tools installed at the time you installed MacPorts is not a problem. It could just cause some ports to fail to build. That can be remedied by installing Xcode or the command line tools and trying to install the affected port again.


> Besides the initial path not setup problems, xorg does not seem to run
> correctly. Errors below:
> 
> ssh -X gives "Warning: untrusted X11 forwarding setup failed: xauth
> key data not generated

I'm not familiar with this warning, but Googling turned up this page:

https://serverfault.com/questions/273847/what-does-warning-untrusted-x11-forwarding-setup-failed-xauth-key-data-not-ge

It suggests that using the -Y flag instead of the -X flag avoids that warning, but you say below that you don't want to do that.


> xeyes:   # "Error: Can't open display:"
> konsole # qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display...   (core dumped)

Make sure you have the xinit and xorg-server ports installed (port installed xinit xorg-server), and check the notes of the xinit port (port notes xinit).


> ssh -Y gives "Warning: no xauth data; using fake authentication data
> for X11 forwarding.
> This appears to tunnel X, but I would prefer to use the safer -X option.
> Other (linux) machines are able to use 'ssh -X' with the same host.

Googling this warning led me to this page:

https://serverfault.com/questions/422908/how-can-i-prevent-the-warning-no-xauth-data-using-fake-authentication-data-for

It says:

> The solution was to add this line to /etc/ssh/ssh_config (may be /etc/ssh/config in some setups) or in ~/.ssh/config (if you don't have admin rights):
> 
> XAuthLocation /opt/X11/bin/xauth

Of course that would apply only to XQuartz. When installing xauth with MacPorts, I presume you would instead use:

XAuthLocation /opt/local/bin/xauth