How can I prevent the warning No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding?

Solution 1:

None of the posted solutions worked for me. My client (desktop) system is running macOS 10.12.5 (Sierra). I added -v to the options for the ssh command and it told me,

debug1: No xauth program.

which means it doesn't have a correct path to the xauth program. (On this version of macOS the path to xauth is nonstandard.) 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

Now the warning message is gone.

Solution 2:

Found the cause, my ~/.ssh/config was incomplete, you need both:

Host *
    ForwardAgent yes
    ForwardX11 yes

My mistake was that I included only the ForwardX11 option.

Solution 3:

Letting Ubuntu bash on Windows 10 run ssh -X to get a GUI environment on a remote server

  • First

Install all the following. On Window, install Xming. On Ubuntu bash, use sudo apt install to install ssh xauth xorg.

sudo apt install ssh xauth xorg
  • Second

Go to the folder contains ssh_config file, mine is /etc/ssh.

  • Third

Edit ssh_config as administrator(USE sudo). Inside ssh_config, remove the hash # in the lines ForwardAgent, ForwardX11, ForwardX11Trusted, and set the corresponding arguments to yes.

# /etc/ssh/ssh_config

Host *
    ForwardAgent yes
    ForwardX11 yes
    ForwardX11Trusted yes
  • Forth

In ssh_config file, remove the front hash # before Port 22 and Protocol 2, and also append a new line at the end of the file to state the xauth file location, XauthLocation /usr/bin/xauth, remember write your own path of xauth file.

# /etc/ssh/ssh_config

#   IdentifyFile ...
    Port 22
    Protocol 2
#   Cipher 3des
#   ...
#   ...
    ...
    ...
    GSSAPIDelegateCredentials no
    XauthLocation /usr/bin/xauth
  • Fifth

Now since we are done editing ssh_config file, save it when we leave the editor. Now go to folder ~ or $HOME, append export DISPLAY=localhost:0 to your .bashrc file and save it.

# ~/.bashrc
...
...
export DISPLAY=localhost:0
  • Last

We are almost done. Restart your bash shell, open your Xming program and use ssh -X yourusername@yourhost. Then enjoy the GUI environment.

ssh -X yourusername@yourhost

The problem is also in Ubuntu subsystem on Windows, and the link is at

https://gist.github.com/DestinyOne/f236f71b9cdecd349507dfe90ebae776

Note: the linked text includes 2 typos (XauthLocaion instead of XauthLocation)

Solution 4:

As noted, it seems that xauth on OS X Yosemite has regressed to an old version that doesn't work with XQuartz's $DISPLAY setting:

% xauth -V
1.0.9
% xauth generate $DISPLAY .
xauth: (argv):1:  bad display name "/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd(...)/org.macosforge.xquartz:0" in "add" command

Solution 5:

There is a bug in MacOS at the moment. I came across this too. The fix for me involved adding the following to my .bash_profile

dispdir=`dirname $DISPLAY`
dispfile=`basename $DISPLAY`
dispnew="$dispdir/:0"
if [ -e $DISPLAY -a "$dispfile" = "org.x:0" ]; then
  mv $DISPLAY $dispnew
fi
export DISPLAY=$dispnew

Essentially the name for the file pipe associated with your X root can't be handled correctly, and thus needs correction. :-)

Tags:

X11

Ssh

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