Question about gnome and X11 Auth

I have an X11 program that requires one of the X11 authorization 
protocols to be set for it to run.

Using twm as a window manager I just build the file .xserverrc to
include 

    #!/bin/sh
    newcookie -md5    
    exec X -auth ${HOME}/.Xauthority -dpi 100

and newcookie contains (with -md5 set) contains

    #!/bin/sh
    key=`ps  laxw | md5`
    HOST=`hostname`
    xauth add ${HOST}/unix:0 . $key
    xauth add ${HOST}:0      . $key

Now this would seem to be independent of the window manager used,
but using gnome, I get the message that no auth has been set, so I
have to assume that even tho this code is executed, that gnome then
does something to clear the values set [[ its been a long time, anyone
remember how to check what auth is set? ]]

So my question is:  What is gnome doing?
and how do I get an auth set when using gnome?

-- 
                                        Reg.Clemens
                                        reg@xxxxxxx