Whatever you do, please be sure that you do NOT include the following line in your rc.conf file:
# /etc/rc.conf
clear_tmp_enable="YES"
I thought I was being overly clever again by having all of my so-called leftover temporary files removed during each reboot, but boy was I mistaken.
The next time I tried to fire up my good old Gnome Desktop it blew up with the following cryptic error message:
_ICETransmkdir: ERROR: euid != 0, directory /tmp/.ICE-unix will not be created.
As it turns out, after nearly a whole day of struggling and searching, I finally figured out what the problem was. You see, the clear_tmp_enable="YES" directive in the rc.conf file was deleting the /tmp/.ICE-unix file. Due to some security feature of X Windows, this file (and also the file /tmp/.X11-unix by the way) has to be root owned. You can't just create it via the desktop as the usual default user.
Here is the workaround in case you too have become entangled in this dilemma. First make sure you are logged in as root, then do the following:
# cd /tmp
# mkdir .ICE-unix
# chmod 777 .ICE-unix
# chmod +t .ICE-unix
So try not to be too clever unless you are absolutely sure of the potential consequences and do not especially like wasting a whole day searching and struggling for nothing.
