Can't display from remote host when running X, but can when running xinit

Question

I'm setting up xdmx. I've got it working, and am now trying to get it to start automatically once both display server boot.

I want to avoid using xinit to start the backend X because I don't want xterm to run when I'm going to start xdmx.

But when I run just X and not xinit, I can't display from a remote host:

displayhost:~ # X &
displayhost:~ # export DISPLAY=:0
displayhost:~ # xhost +

clienthost:~ $ export DISPLAY=displayhost:0
clienthost:~ $ xterm
No protocol specified
No protocol specified
No protocol specified
No protocol specified
xterm Xt error: Can't open display: questek0.local:0

If I run netstat -l on the displayhost, I can see that it is listening on port 6000. I can also telnet to the displayhost port 6000 from the clienthost, so I don't think it is a network issue.

How can I get the above to work?

Answer 1

It seems like the distro I'm working on (Open SuSE) has a /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc file that does some xauth things:

xauth -f $auth source - <<-EOF
add $tcpip $cookie
add $unix  $cookie
add ${host}/unix$dspnum $cookie
EOF

I now do something similar to this before I start the X server.