Difference between revisions of "How to use X applications remotely"

Revision as of 10:58, 13 May 2011

If you have several computers running Salix you can access one from another using seral methods. Some of them are described below:

X forwarding via SSH

Configure the server

enable X forarding by uncommenting the following line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

X11Forwarding yes

make sure ssh daemon is restarted and running:

service restart sshd

if you want sshd to run at boot:

chmod a+x  /etc/rc.d/rc.sshd

Connect to the server

Just login via ssh from any Linux machine able to run X using -X or -Y option (difference among them not clear to me):

ssh -Y user@server application_name

like this:

ssh -Y jack@192.168.1.2 thunar

Thunar will be executed on machine with IP 192.168.1.2 but the display will be forwarded to the client`s X server.

Or just log in, then run the desired application from command line like this:

 ssh -Y jack@192.168.1.2

then type thunar

Via XDMCP

XDMCP states for X Display Manager Control Protocol and uses UDP port 177.

Configure GDM on the server

In order to use XDMPC one has to configure Gnome Display Manager by editing /etc/gdm/custom.conf in [xdmcp] section to have:

[xdmcp]
Enable=true
Port=177

Restarting GDM is required. Root can do this by init 3; init 4 combination:

init 3
init 4

Run GDM on the remote server

X -query servername :display

This might look like this:

X -query 192.168.1.2 :1

Option :0 for display is usually already claimed so :1 or higher will be needed to run.