[webintosh]

I recently installed XFree86 (through Fink) on both my home and work machines in hopes of getting a remote X session up and running.

These are the steps I took:

1.) Started off my editing the sshd.conf file on my home machine to enable X session.

2.) Logged into my home machine with the following command:

ssh -X user@host

3.) Attempt to start an X session with the following command:

'startx -- -fullscreen'

XFree86 then attempts to load, but soon craps out with the following message.

Fatal server error:
no screens found
OsVendorFatalError
AbortDDX
Quitting XDarwin...
X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

Anyone know what's going on here?

[jcroft]

I don't believe you can run startx remotley. SSH forwarding allows you to run individual X11 apps remotley, but I don't know that you can start your whole desktop like that.

If you want to do that, you want to run an XDMCP server on the remote machine. Then you can export your whole desktop...

Which leads me to the question: is there an XDMCP server that compilies cleanly on mac and works with Apple's X11?

[Carl Norum]

Originally posted by jcroft:
I don't believe you can run startx remotley. SSH forwarding allows you to run individual X11 apps remotley, but I don't know that you can start your whole desktop like that.

I think this is correct. Are you sure you really want to do this? I can't think of any really good reason to want to. I could always be enlightened, however.

[webintosh]

Originally posted by Carl Norum:
I think this is correct. Are you sure you really want to do this? I can't think of any really good reason to want to. I could always be enlightened, however.

I was under the impression that this was how you started X applications. That you needed to first get the entire X environment up and running.

Do you instead run appps from the command-line? Is the Terminal smart enough to start XFree86 when it encounters an X app???

Pretty confused...

[ivi]

XFree is based on a server/client model, you don't actually need to have X running on the remote machine in order to have remote X programs displayed on your local machine. The remote machine will be a client and machine you want X apps to be displayed on is a server, thus you should allow a client to use your display for displaying. So to tunnel over ssh you want to do the following on the machine you currently working on:

$xhost +remoteip
$ssh remoteip -l login
$export DISPLAY=localip:0
$appname &

when you end session do

$xhost -remoteip

[Carl Norum]

Originally posted by ivi:
$xhost +remoteip
$ssh remoteip -l login
$export DISPLAY=localip:0
$appname &

when you end session do

$xhost -remoteip

Too complicated!

Just use

ssh -X user@remoteHost

Then when you login you can use all your X apps, and they will display on the local machine's screen. (Make sure you're using an xterm when you do it though).

[webintosh]

Originally posted by Carl Norum:
Too complicated!

Just use

ssh -X user@remoteHost

Then when you login you can use all your X apps, and they will display on the local machine's screen. (Make sure you're using an xterm when you do it though).

Probably a dumb question, but I'll ask it anyways since I haven't seen it specifically mentioned in the docs I've read.

In order to run X apps remotely from my office, does XFree86 already have to be running on my home machine? I've been trying to start it remotely with the 'startx' command which has created problems.

[absmiths]

Originally posted by webintosh:
Probably a dumb question, but I'll ask it anyways since I haven't seen it specifically mentioned in the docs I've read.

In order to run X apps remotely from my office, does XFree86 already have to be running on my home machine? I've been trying to start it remotely with the 'startx' command which has created problems.

This may or may not clarify (and may or may not be correct), but this is the process I used to use:

1 - StartX on my local machine.
2 - telnet to remote host.
3 - set the display variable on the remote host to point to my local computer.
4 - Start an xterm on the remote computer.
5 - After a second, an xterm popped up on my local machine.

That's to the best of my recollection. The whole X architecture is pretty confusing but remember - the X app has to run on the REMOTE machine, and the X Server (the visible display) runs on your local host. The remote machine has to have X libs installed but doesn't have to have a server running.

[Carl Norum]

Originally posted by webintosh:
In order to run X apps remotely from my office, does XFree86 already have to be running on my home machine? I've been trying to start it remotely with the 'startx' command which has created problems.

I don't know from this which direction you mean.

Here's what I do:

1) Start X11 on my local machine, and get an xterm

2) in that xterm, type
ssh -X user@remotehost

3) type password

4) run programs on the remote host; their windows will display on the local machine

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Carl Norum:
I don't know from this which direction you mean.

Here's what I do:

1) Start X11 on my local machine, and get an xterm

2) in that xterm, type
ssh -X user@remotehost

3) type password

4) run programs on the remote host; their windows will display on the local machine

Works fine that way for me, except for rasmol. But among others, gnuplot and mozilla both work fine that way.

[11011001]

Originally posted by webintosh:
Probably a dumb question, but I'll ask it anyways since I haven't seen it specifically mentioned in the docs I've read.

In order to run X apps remotely from my office, does XFree86 already have to be running on my home machine? I've been trying to start it remotely with the 'startx' command which has created problems.

you have to run it inside XFree86, so you can use the X windows server.. in an xterm

so ya, to run X apps from the office, you have to be running XFree86 on your home machine, and you have to be using the xterm in XFree86

Tried this with X11.. perhaps I am doing something wrong? Does Apple's version have troubles with this?