Comment 19 for bug 196464

No, this sounds like the normal and expected mode of operation (the gui update tools also run under sudo, AFAIK).

I have now found an easy way to reproduce:
/etc/init.d/atieventsd restart

You have to log out to get back to normal operation (or do "/etc/init.d/atieventsd stop; chown $USER:$USER .Xauthority").

After the restart, these operations are triggered about once per second through atieventsd->/etc/ati/authatieventsd.sh->xauth:
Mon Apr 14 10:50:40 CEST 2008 root: xauth -f /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth list
Mon Apr 14 10:50:40 CEST 2008 root: xauth -f /home/jobh/.Xauthority add :0 . 3033a32a297b496c426e092bdc7ce746
Mon Apr 14 10:50:40 CEST 2008 root: xauth -f /home/jobh/.Xauthority remove :0

which leaves ~/.Xauthority owned by root.

Before the restart, i.e. when things were working correctly, this was instead the sequence of operations (also once per second, which seems very wasteful since it's the same key that's added/removed every time). Writing was to a temporary file:

Mon Apr 14 10:47:23 CEST 2008 : -f /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth list
Mon Apr 14 10:47:23 CEST 2008 : -f /tmp/atievntX.EERLDe add :0 . 3033a32a297b496c426e092bdc7ce746
Mon Apr 14 10:47:23 CEST 2008 : -f /tmp/atievntX.EERLDe remove :0

(note $USER was not set but probably root also here since that's the owner of /tmp/atieventX.EERLDe).