Trouble in accessing `/home/USERNAME/.Xauthority'

[Nils Kassube]

Hamed Abdy wrote:
> I'm a beginner user of Ubuntu(and also Linux), using Ubuntu 9.10.
> I tried to setup linux-firewall.org using this steps(as mentioned in
> www.linux-firewall.org):
> 
[...]
> 4. Run the following commands:
> sudo lfwsetup
> sudo ln -fs ~/.Xauthority /root/.Xauthority
> sudo chown USERNAME.root ~/.Xauthority
> (you will have to replace USERNAME with your username)
> 5. Restart your PC and enjoy the software
> 
> Until step 4, I hadn't any problem. But when I run "sudo chown
> hamed.root ~/.Xauthority", I get this error:
> 
> chown: cannot access `/home/hamed/.Xauthority': No such file or
>  directory

I think the reason is that there is no file "/root/.Xauthority". 
Therefore I would suggest you create it as an empty file with the 
command

sudo touch /root/.Xauthority

and then the chown command should succeed. However, I don't know if that 
will work because perhaps the file may not be empty.

Out of curiosity: Why do you want to use this firewall? It seems to be a 
proprietary program while there are several free firewall programs 
available in the repositories. One of them (ufw) is even installed by 
default. Furthermore, the website doesn't look very trustworthy to me.


Nils