Remote X11 Sessions? 17
fyrebryan writes "I am fairly new to linux (approx 1 year), and while I have gotten fairly good at working with linux (and love it!!) there is something that i have not been able to find much info about on the web. it is how to run an X Windows session remotely. Security is something that does have me worried, but i am fairly sure that security has already been addressed. If anyone could please help me out and point me to some more info about running X remotely (and possibly on a Win9x machine) it would be greatly appreciated." Is there a good, comprehensive primer on remote X11 sessions that include things like setting up: encrypted X11 sessions, common xhost and MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE problems and so forth? Sometimes, pointing your DISPLAY environment variable to the right server just isn't sufficient, and combing thru man pages don't yield much in the search for workable information.
Re:Pay for software??? (Score:1)
Re:Great Idea! (Score:1)
If you just want a plain login prompt on your text consoles, getty is what you want. Just point getty at ttyX and you're most of the way there. (Do it in /etc/inittab. Most of the distros do this for you...)
If that's not what you wanted, then perhaps you can elaborate on your question?
--Joe--
XWin (Score:1)
Re:Pay for software??? (Score:1)
O'Reilly as usual (Score:2)
I would recommend O'Reilly's X Window System Administrator's Guide (ISBN 0-937175-83-8). It's a little dated, but covers a lot of this ground nevertheless (for that matter, The Unix Programming Environment is extremely dated, but I find it indispensible).
You're welcome.
Tom
Pay for software??? (Score:2)
SSH (Score:2)
ssh username@yourmachine.yours.com
then after the password just run an X app just like you would locally:
xeyes
trust me, it's too easy. Completely secure also (X is transmitted back over the encrypted channel).
WeirdX (Score:2)
There's a GPL'd Java app called WeirdX [freshmeat.net] that functions as an X server. Since That covers the remote X on win9x part. I'm don't know of any way to use it securely, though. (hmm, maybe that would be a good project, a Java ssh client with X forwarding...)
Appropriate Questions? (Score:2)
You see, this question is such a basic one, such a FAQ, that it has been answered countless times before. A simple google search using the terms "remote", "X" and "howto" as parameters will pull up more than enough resources, including the ever-so-popular "Remote X HOWTO" on many sites across the internet.
Now, don't think I'm into bashing newbies, only slashdot editors
VNC (Score:2)
Re:Take a look (Score:2)
Re:SSH (Score:2)
Take a look (Score:2)
They give you a free acount with Free X-windows over the net.
Perty cool, escpecially when I can show off Linux from an old crappy p100 from school.
And it always amazes people that its not actually on that computer, its on a computer that could be 1/2 way around the world.
Great Idea! (Score:2)
I've been trying to do this recently myself, and have had a good amount of success. There are a few HOWTOs that you definetly need to read before you get too deep into it. Specifically, the XDMCP HOWTO, Remote-X-Apps MINI-HOWTO, and the XDM-Xterm MINI-HOWTO. Also, I looked at the Diskless HOWTO because essentially what is geared for diskless machines is also helpful.
Now, if you're really feeling good, set up your X Server such that vt7 and vt8 are your local X server, vt9 is your home server, and vt10 is that kickass work computer that you hate to have sit all night without someone monkeying around on it.
If anyone can tell me how I can get simple text-terminals (i.e. a telnet login prompt) sent to my workstation's virtutual terminals, let me know. I can do it via a serial cable, but over TCP/IP it seems much more difficult.
X FAQ (Score:3)
X FAQ [landfield.com]
Virtual Network Computing (Score:3)
VNC is a real gem because it is truly platform independent, and can run on even the most nonUnix systems such as Windows. No need to install a bulky X server on the client machine just to run a few xterms or oclocks.
ssh is pretty standard for this (Score:4)
Even with this, you must still secure your X server. Do not use host based security(xhost)security, make sure that is set to allow no hosts. (I think you need to allow localhost if using windows with ssh - it's been a while )
I would use the ssh mechanism even on the local LAN as it is simple to implement and pretty
transparent to users.
Magic cookie with xauth works well. I know there are issues with the type of cookie and whether you are using NFS to distribute the cookies, etc. but I haven't worked in that type of environment in a while. R5 can do XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1, but you had to do some tweaks to make it work.
There is an old oreilly book 'X Window System Administrator's Guide' that is pretty good, though it doesn't cover release 6. Presumably
R6 added some security stuff, but I've never looked into this.
This seems somewhat informative:
http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/mini/Remote
Hope this helps,
TeX