X authorization problems in a mobile environment

[Egbert Eich]

Keith Packard writes:
 > On Tue, 2005-08-09 at 16:52 +0200, Egbert Eich wrote:
 > 
 > > Thought about something like this too. The wildcard entry would get
 > > rewritten whenever a new entry for localhost is added. Removal would
 > > be difficult as you would have to compare the 'payload' or you don't
 > > care to leave a stale wildcard entry behind. 
 > 
 > Right, I don't care about stale entries as there would only be one such.
 > 
 > > Also I wanted to avoid such ambiguities as they still leave 'holes'
 > > behind - cases in which the solution may not work.
 > 
 > If your hostname is constant, the static entry isn't ever used, it's
 > only when the hostname doesn't match an entry in the file that it uses
 > the static entry. I think this only makes it more likely that things
 > would work, and shouldn't ever break a working environment.
 > 
 > Yes, it's probably not a perfect solution, but I think it's easier than
 > playing around with the DISPLAY string or other user-visible changes.
 > 

Playing around with the DISPLAY string wasn't my first choice.
Instead I wanted to add an environment variable. This one would 
only be used in case a matching hostname entry cannot be found.
It is probably as user visible as an additional entry in the
authority file - however less ambiguous.
I've confirmed that relocating a device to a different while NFS 
remains mounted doesn't seem to be completely out of the question.
So avoiding this kind of ambiguity may avoid having to look for a
different method in the future.

Egbert.