XQuartz $DISPLAY problems, cannot open xclock locally, cannot ssh -X

Question

I am trying to solve a cascading series of bugs that started with me not able to copy to my macOS clipboard from remote ssh and has lead me to realize my X11 situation is seriously messed up. I have read a few other stackoverflow threads and they do not address my particular problems.

First my setup is macOS Mojave 10.14.5. I have xquartz 2.7.11 installed from the website. When I run echo $DISPLAY locally (on macOS) I get /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.waagOnO6Qm/org.macosforge.xquartz:0.

Since I don't know where the error actually is I will list two problems I can identify currently.

Two problems:

1. If I run xclock locally nothing happens inside my terminal. I do notice that an "active" dot appears under the XQuartz dock icon for a second and then disappears. But after this happens my terminal still just hangs at xclock as though it is running.
2. If I try to ssh -X remote into a remote machine my terminal is locked out. I cannot keyboard interrupt. I ran this with -vvv to try to debug and I see that it hangs with xauth:

debug2: client_x11_get_proto: /opt/X11/bin/xauth -f /var/folders/jw/ltyk9x9n0_xb61jhdnct27fr0000gn/T//ssh-vcqwT7qh5yk2/xauthfile generate /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.waagOnO6Qm/org.macosforge.xquartz:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 untrusted timeout 1260 2>/dev/null

Attempts to Solve

1. Other related stack threads have suggested reinstalling XQuartz, which I have done, both manually and with Homebrew. I have logged back out and in following reinstallation.
2. This thread suggested I solve my xauth problem by deleting .XAuthority file and recreating it. However, when I

xauth generate :0 . trusted 

My XQuartz pops up a window saying XQuartz quit unexpectedly which I can provide the Report for if it helps. Then in the terminal it says xauth: (argv):1: unable to open display ":0". Also I'm not sure this is the problem anyway because my .XAuthority file already contained an entry that it looks like this is trying to produce: $HOST/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 db7738324ca3662767b20b97b4a68680 Though it is concerning that running xauth is causing my xquartz to repeatedly quit unexpectedly (this dialog box is appearing multiple times).

This has been very frustrating to debug because I am not sure where the problem is, with xauth or xquartz somehow even though it is newly installed. Further, existing StackOverflow threads I have found detail the problem only with ssh -X but clearly I'm having problems locally, given that I can't even run xclock.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The dot appearing and disappearing quickly indicates that the server process is terminating. This means that either the server crashed, the managing client (eg ~/.xinitrc) terminated, or we failed to even start xinit.

Almost every case I have ever seen of this has been due to someone doing something wrong in their init scripts (eg: ~/.bash*, ~/.profile, ~/.xinitrc).

Remove those and try again, then bisect to figure out the underlying issue.

However, the crash dialog from your "ssh" case indicates that it is likely the server crashing. You will need to look at the crash log for more information (or provide it here if you want help with that).