Comment # 18 on bug 1174593 from Josef M�llers

(In reply to Stefan Dirsch from comment #17)
> (In reply to Dr. Werner Fink from comment #15)
> > This is what I see as root even with option `-i`
> > 
> >   boole:~ # XAUTHORITY=/suse/werner/.Xauthority xauth -vi nlist
> >   xauth:  /suse/werner/.Xauthority not writable, changes will be ignored
> > 
> > that means that even for read action (and `nlist` seems to be a read action)
> > xauth tries to lock.  Nevertheless as root even can not read the Xauthority
> > file
> > 
> >   ll /suse/werner/.Xauthority
> >   -rw------- 1 werner suse 363 Oct  1 08:12 /suse/werner/.Xauthority
> > 
> > the correct solution is to do the xauth call as user and not as root hence
> > this bug belongs IMHO to the maintainer of  pam(_xauth)
> 
> I fully agree with Werner.

This is not possible, as the invoking user's ID is lost:
requesting user 0/0, target user 0/0

The path name of the .Xauthority file is taken from an environment variable
("XAUTHORITY") set by the GUI and pointing to a file belonging to a "third"
user (neither the requesting user nor the target user).