Xauthority and ICEauthority

[Michael Perry <mperry znet com>]

I recently had some trying times with seemingly corrupted Xauthority file
that refused to lock and then problems after generating a new .xauthority
file with ICEauthority.  There seemed to be some overall problems because I
could not su to root or do much until I let linuxconf rebuild the user home
resources.  X would not start whatsoever.

ON this particular machine, no one else logs on to it nor will they ever.  I
kinda understand what xauthority does; but what does iceauthority do?  What
happens when these files do not get locked or get corrupted?  Can one run
without either of these in RedHat 6 with gnome and E running?  Most impt,
how does one turn these so-called "features" off?  Is ICEauthority something
that gnome needs to work?  The man page on iceauthority is rather
minimalistic.  Xauthority had more interesting reading on websites, etc.
I see in the xdm-config file values to control authority settings. Does one
turn these off to lose the auth stuff? Does this include console as well as
X logins?  

I spent an evening on this particular problem so would like to mitigate the
chances of this happening again.

Thanks.

-- 
Michael Perry-				"No one can give you wiser advice	
mperry@znet.com	       	 .o O		 	   than yourself" -Cicero
		     	'  Gnome: at www.gnome.org
		           "Happiness is a state of foot!"