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Notes / x11chromiumsnapsshubuntuxauthority

Chromium over ssh -X: Connection rejected because of wrong authentification

· by shaun

Forwarded X11 worked for xterm but the snap-packaged Chromium failed with "Connection rejected because of wrong authentification". The snap looks for .Xauthority inside its own home; symlinking it there fixes it.

Tested onUbuntu 20.04 (both ends); Chromium snap; OpenSSH X11 forwarding

Symptoms #

Between two Ubuntu 20.04 machines, ssh -X forwarding worked for xterm and friends, but Chromium refused to open:

textConnection rejected because of wrong authentification

Cause #

Chromium on Ubuntu is a snap. Snaps get their own $HOME under ~/snap/<name>/current, so Chromium looks for .Xauthority there and never finds the cookie that sshd wrote to ~/.Xauthority.

Fix #

Link the real file into the snap's home:

bashln -s ~/.Xauthority ~/snap/chromium/current/.Xauthority

Alternatively run it with XAUTHORITY=$HOME/.Xauthority chromium.