[mythtv-users] .ICEAuthority corrupt for a second time

[Michael T. Dean]

On 12/03/2011 04:10 PM, Tim Draper wrote:
> as per the subject; my .ICEAuthority file has become corrupt for the
> second time in 2 weeks.
> deleting the file and rebooting recreates and fixes whatever the problem is.
>
> this shows itself as failing to open mythfrontend, although will wait
> pending some timeout on the mythbuntu theme background texture (black
> with dark grey lines)
>
> the first time it happened i dont know what caused it. I did loose
> ADSL service, so i put it down to a network issue.
> this time i closed mythfrontend, ran updates (both ubuntu and mythtv
> updates), reboot as it required kernel updates, and then i had issues.
>
> while i havent checked SMART data yet (ubuntu repo's seem to be having
> speed issues), bonnie++ suggests the disk is performing correctly.
>
> the machine is FE only, and runs mythbuntu 11.04 x64, with myth 0.24.1
>
> any ideas what could be triggering this? i've been using mythtv for a
> year now and it's been perfect. i recently reconfigured my mythtv
> setup as a seperate BE and FE setup, and this FE is about a month old
> in it's install. the FE hardware proved fine in it's previous use.

Likely, "corrupt" isn't the right word.  Usually this problem exists 
because /something/ on your system (and MythTV does not and could not 
ever do this) changes the ownership or permissions of the 
~/.ICEauthority file.  Therefore, deleting it lets some low-level 
function in X's ICElib or whatever re-create it with proper ownership 
and permissions.

My guess is that when it's broken, you will find root ownership if you 
do an ls -l ~/.ICEauthority

Over the years, many programs have been known to mess up the 
ownership/permissions of this file...  Examples include k3b, 
kwifimanager, and many more (likely mainly ones which are run setuid 
root or actually run as root, i.e using sudo or ...).

Rather than delete it, you /could/ just change ownership--but deleting 
is nice an easy.

Mike