I kept getting that message on the tinycore command line. I tried with tight vnc and rdesktop.

I have installed the xstart thing and now the core install loads into the desktop by default. As a side note how do I stop that? I want x for rdp etc but i still want to boot into core and load X only as needed.

Anyhow I was reading an article which said:

If you have problems the first thing to do is to see the value of the variable DISPLAY on the client. If it is not set at all or set incorrectly you need to fix that, for example

export DISPLAY=10.10.10.1:0.0

So I put that line into the command line. Then I tried the clients again. Now it seems to hang for like two mins on the pressing of return but eventually it just returned: ERROR: Failed to open display: 10.10.10.1:0.0

What should I do now?

btw I'm trying to connect to windows 8.1. I initially tried with rdp/rdesktop but tightvnc is looking more appealing to me now.

I believe you are speaking of X11 Forwarding.

There's a command called xhost that's controls which hosts are allowed to connect to your server. Have a quick read.

And when you want to connect to a server you need to set your DISPLAY environment variable correctly.

For example, when I ssh into my other box, and type

echo $DISPLAY

it tells me

localhost:11.0

Now the Xwindows server running on that box is 0.0, so 11.0 must be a connection to another server, namely the one running on the box I'm sitting at.

When I first set it up I had to tell it the ip address to use, so I ssh in to the other box and typed

export DISPLAY=192.168.1.66:0

and then ran an X program from that box. It appeared on my monitor and worked. Then I guess it remembered and I never had to do it again.

I'm sure someone can give you a more technical explanation, but I hope this gets you started.

Thanks for response. This is trying my patience now.

I try and connect via rdesktop gui and get: Error: connect: Network is unreachable.

I try in to use both the public ip address and the local one that shows in ip config.

I tried putting: DISPLAY=myactualipofserver:1 and also DISPLAY=myactualipofserver:5901

All that did was change the can't open display to the ip I changed it to. Am I supposed to be putting the ip of the server I'm trying to connect to? which is what I did above?

I also tried xvhost + and that did nothing.

What to try next?