hidden files in home directory

sulekha

can anyone explain me the purpose of the following hidden files which are usually seen in the home directory ?


.Xauthority
.xsession-errors
.recently-used-xbel
.recently-used
.pulse-cookie
.lesshst
.ICEauthority
.gksu.lock
.esd_auth


aarklon

The `.xsession' file, a hidden file in your home directory, specifies the clients that are automatically run when your X session first starts. It is just a shell script, usually containing a list of clients to run. You can edit your `.xsession' file in a text editor, and if this
file doesn't exist, you can create it.


Fritz monroe

I don't have details, but it's a place for you to start digging.

.Xauthority - X11 forwarding related
.xsession-errors - holds errors caused during the start of X Windows
.recently-used - Gnome's recently opened documents (Places >> Recent Documents)
.pulse-cookie - maybe pulseaudio related?
.lesshst - no idea
.ICEauthority - don't know
.gksu.lock - this is a lock file for gksu (Gtk+ frontend to su and sudo)
.esd_auth - something to do with the esd sound system.
.recently-used-xbel - not sure, seems to be GIMP related. So probably the GIMP recently opened images

Sidney Lambe

$ apropos Xauthority

Xauthority: nothing appropriate

$ apropos authority

Xau library: XauFileName [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
XauDisposeAuth [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
XauGetAuthByAddr [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
XauGetBestAuthByAddr [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
XauLockAuth [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
XauReadAuth [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
XauUnlockAuth [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
XauWriteAuth [Xau] (3) - X authority database routines
iceauth (1x) - ICE authority file utility
xauth (1) - X authority file utility

And that last entry looks pretty promising.

$ man xauth

There's your answer, on your own box, right under your nose.


Mark Hobley

Maybe we need some more manual pages:

man .Xauthority

No manual entry for .Xauthority

man .xsession-errors

No manual entry for .xsession-errors

We have one for xsession, but it contains capitalized names. I don't know why we do this. The capital X is probably something to do with the X windowing system (or should that be the x windowing system? Hmmm, should we be using uppercase first letters for executables? Yuck! Letter
case adds to the confusion here).

man xsession

Xsession(5)

NAME
Xsession - initialize X session


N.B:- Tested in ubuntu 8.04.1