manpage says xhost +username should work

[Jörg Höhle]

Binary package hint: xhost

Hi,

The manpage says:
       [+]name The given name (the plus sign is optional) is added to the list allowed to connect to the X server. The name can be a host name or a user name.

The manpage gives the impression that I can selectively enable other users to participate in my X session. This is much preferable over xhost +localhost or xhost +local:

But trying it out yields:
$ LANG=C xhost +u2
xhost: bad hostname "u2"
u2 is a regular user name on this system. xhost +local: works but is not discriminating enough.

I have TCP disabled for X, i.e. only local sessions are possible. Ubuntu Dapper is installed. I checked manpages from Debian and Suse, e.g. http://www.sourcentral.org/man/SLES9/1+xhost and they all contain the same text.

Under what circumstances would it be possible to use user names with xhost?
Is the manpage text misleading?

Regards,
 Jörg Höhle

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

You probably want to use serverinterpreted, such as xhost +SI:localuser:u2

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

Should just need a small doc fix.

[Jörg Höhle (joerg-cyril-hoehle)]

That's it. Thanks a lot!

BTW, Google finds 0 hits for X_ChangeHosts localuser.

I wish xhost would document the common si: possibilities, or refer to the Xsecurity manpage (found via Google, it's not installed here).
http://www.sourcentral.org/man/SLES10/7+Xsecurity

This leads to another bug -- shall I open a separate issue or is that ok here?
http://packages.ubuntu.com/#search_packages
could not find a package containing the Xsecurity manpage except for Japaneese:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_contents.pl?word=Xsecurity&searchmode=searchword&case=insensitive&version=dapper&arch=i386
SourceCentral seems to indicate that Xsecurity is only documented in Japaneese in Ubuntu 6.06
http://www.sourcentral.org/man/ubuntu606/7+
http://www.sourcentral.org/man/ubuntu606/ja/7+Xsecurity

Indeed, the package xmanpages-ja contains that manpage:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_contents.pl?searchmode=filelist&word=xmanpages-ja&version=dapper&arch=all&page=25&number=50

Where are the manpages for Xsecurity in English and other languages?
The xhost and Xserver manpages refer to it.

Regards,
 Jörg Höhle

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

having the same prob with gutsy

[nqzero (nqzero)]

why is this "wishlist" ??? the manpage is wrong, plain and simple. maybe the ability to specify the user is the behavior that ubuntu ultimately wants to adopt, but in the meantime, the manpage should be fixed. it says one thing, the application does something different ... it's a bug. maybe you don't have the time or desire to fix either the application or the man page, but at the least leave it as a bug (ie not a wishlist) here so that us users know what we're dealing with ...

this has been wrong for 4 years now - i'm using maverick