I think I have resolved my problem, but having typed most of this I might as well send it. I have OpenSSH_2.5.1p2 which I am trying to build on Irix 5 In Irix /usr/include/paths.h _PATH_ROOTPATH and _PATH_USERPATH are defined. defines.h looks for USER_PATH and _PATH_STDPATH and misses this, so that sshd does not include the path for X11 when users login. I copied a chunk of ifdef viz. #ifdef _PATH_USERPATH # ifdef _PATH_STDPATH # undef _PATH_STDPATH # endif # define _PATH_STDPATH _PATH_USERPATH #endif Having fixed that, I was having problems with X forwarding I was seeing (with ssh2) warning: X11 connection requests different authentication protocol: 'MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1' vs. ''. but it's not XAUTHORITY getting clobbered as was discussed last year. Aha, aha. I see Running /sbin/sh /etc/ssh/sshrc instead of Running /usr/bin/X11/xauth add mylocal:12.0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 In an earlier effort to resolve the PATH problem mentioned earlier, another developer had created /etc/ssh/sshrc in order to try setting the path, but had not executed xauth in it. So if I just delete that file things should be OK, I hope. -- Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376 security at triumf.ca