No protocol specified

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1

After over 15 years of using the stable SUSE/openSUSE distros I installed tumbleweed for the first time a week ago. I find it excellent (not a surprise of course) and perfect for my purposes.

I realized though that a couple of applications I use on a terminal (one of them a GIS program, the other a custom made Perl script that puts color on certain lines) return the message “No protocol specified”. Although this is apparently only a warning and no apparent cause of error I wanted to do something to stop this showing.

I understand the issue has to do with .Xauthority and displays but I admittedly have trouble making sense of the many explanations and solutions posted around the internet. In one attempt to solve the issue I added my users to the video group but the problem persists.

Although I can certainly live with this I would appreciate if someone could suggest other potential solutions.

Thanks in advance

2

I have run into that.

I then logout, and use CTRL-ALT-F1 to get a terminal (virtual console). I login there, and remove “.Xauthority”. I then logout, use CTRL-ALT-F7 to resume the GUI login screen. And I login again there. And all is fine.

If I switch DM (say from GDM to Lightdm), the problem shows up again. It is looking to me as if different DMs use “.Xauthority” in somewhat incompatible ways.

3

Thank you for your answer, @nrickert . I have just tried removing .Xauthority the way you suggested but did not solve the problem. No worries. I will continue investigating this and eventually report on any solutions I find.
Have a nice day!:slight_smile: