Re: [VirtualGL-Devel] Why use vglgenkey instead of xhost?

[DRC <dco...@us...>]

This question belongs on virtualgl-devel.  Please try to avoid 
double-posting.

The "xhost +si" syntax is, to the best of my knowledge, not universally 
available on all of the platforms we support (vglgenkey has to support 
BSD and Solaris as well as Linux.)  Further, there are platforms on 
which you can't use xauth with the display manager because the DM is 
locked down.  Such platforms will only allow you to copy the existing 
magic cookie from the DM, which vglgenkey does if it is unable to 
generate a new one.

The quick answer to "why do you do it this way" is always going to be 
"because we've tested it that way, usually for many years, and it 
works."  If vglgenkey doesn't work on some platform, then I'll fix it, 
but I do not make a habit of fixing things that aren't broken.


On 1/6/14 9:40 PM, Sam S. wrote:
> When running `vglserver_config` and selecting the option to restrict X
> server access to the "vglusers" group, it patches the display manager's
> init script to run `vglgenkey` on startup (which is, in turn, is a
> script that messes around with xauth magic cookies).
>
> Why not make the display manager call this command instead:
>
>     xhost +si:localgroup:vglusers
>
> It's like `xhost +local:`, except that it only grants access to members
> of the "vglusers" group.