Introduction

I’m running fedora after running Ubuntu for a long time. For a project I need to run a X11 application in a devcontainer. This devcontainer needs an access to the Xauthority file in order to display items on the screen. On ubuntu, and .Xauthority file is automatically created by the gnome session in the home folder of the user. But on fedora, the .Xauthority file is created in /run/user/1000/ and not in the home folder. This is a problem because the devcontainer is not able to access this file.

My mount configuration in the devcontainer settings:

"mounts": [
    "source=${localEnv:HOME}${localEnv:USERPROFILE}/.ssh,target=/home/vscode/.ssh,type=bind,readonly,consistency=cached",
    "source=${localEnv:HOME}/.Xauthority,target=/home/vscode/.Xauthority,type=bind,readonly,consistency=cached",
    "source=/tmp/.X11-unix,target=/tmp/.X11-unix,type=bind,consistency=cached",
    "source=/dev/,target=/dev/,type=bind,consistency=consistent"
],
"runArgs": [
    "--privileged",
    "--env",
    "DISPLAY"
],

ℹ️ HOME vs USERPROFILE
I’m working with people using windows computers. The dual notation USERPROFILE and HOME allows the mount to work on both Windows and Linux hosts.

Solution

Create a systemd service that will create the .Xauthority file in the home folder of the user. So the devcontainer can access it. It will be a symlink to the file created by the gnome session.

/etc/systemd/user/xauthority.service

[Unit]
Description=Create Xauthority to forward screen in devcontainers

[Service]
Type=oneshot
#User=perceval
#Group=perceval
WorkingDirectory=/home/perceval/
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/rm -rf /home/perceval/.Xauthority
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -c "while [ ! -e /run/user/1000/.mutter-Xwaylandauth.* ]; do sleep 1; done; ln -s /run/user/1000/.mutter-Xwaylandauth.* .Xauthority"

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.target

Comments

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