This has bugged me for years – with random success depending on sudo, su – etc.
The proper solution:-
steve@studio:~$ ssh -X 192.168.0.201 Last login: Fri Feb 10 21:54:11 2017 from 192.168.0.247 [steve@fleabox ~]$ xauth list fleabox.track3.org.uk/unix:12 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 b4339e07fb0e4febdde6128fc56419e4 [steve@fleabox ~]$ sudo su - [sudo] password for steve: [root@fleabox ~]# xauth add fleabox.track3.org.uk/unix:12 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 b4339e07fb0e4febdde6128fc56419e4 [root@fleabox ~]# virt-manager & [1] 7168
Success!