Comment # 16 on bug 1174593 from Josef M�llers

(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

I straced the xauth invocation and found that it tries to create a file in
~user:
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/suse/jmoellers/.Xauthority-c", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_EXCL,
0600)
but as it does not have permission, this fails (EACCES (Permission denied)).
Xauth (or XauLockAuth()) then hopes that this will go away by itself, so it
sleeps for 2s:
nanosleep({tv_sec=2, tv_nsec=0}, 0x7ffe5d5194f0)
and tries again. After 10 tries it gives up.