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I ran an X app sudo'ed from my normal account, using:

mylappy$ ssh -Y [email protected]
    [email protected]'s password:
[me@myhost ~]$ sudo su - 
[root@myhost ~]# su - me -c 'xauth list' |\
     grep `echo $DISPLAY |\
         cut -d ':' -f 2 |\
         cut -d '.' -f 1 |\
         sed -e s/^/:/`  |\
     xargs -n 3 xauth add

Now, whenever I try to ssh in with the -Y flag, I get this error.

mylappy$ ssh -Y [email protected]
[email protected]'s password: 
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
                                                                                                                   shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
                                                        shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
                                                                                                                                                                           Last login: Fri Apr 17 17:43:14 2015 from my.isp.com

Clearly, running this app as root wrote something somewhere that subsequent ssh sessions as me aren't able to execute because it is root-related.

I cleaned out ~/.gnome and anything else that looked suspicious in ~. Nuked .Xauthority.

I tried running /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc, ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile to see if anything there was throwing this error. Nope.

[me@myhost ~]$ . /etc/profile           
[me@myhost ~]$ . /etc/bashrc
[me@myhost ~]$ . ~/.bash_profile 
[me@myhost ~]$ . ~/.bashrc

Where else would ssh -Y be executing things from that might throw this error?

Note, this does not happen without the -Y flag.

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1 Answer 1

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from the sshd manpage:

If ~/.ssh/rc exists and the sshd_config(5) PermitUserRC option is set, runs it; else if /etc/ssh/sshrc exists, runs it; otherwise runs xauth. The “rc” files are given the X11 authentication protocol and cookie in standard input. See SSHRC, below.

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  • well, it turns out it was the .Xauthority on my local machine (laptop connecting to myhost.com) that was the problem! Removed that, error went away.
    – adapt-dev
    Apr 18, 2015 at 1:38

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