I installed OpenSSH and connected to a remote machine with:
ssh -Y remotehost

Now, the problem occurs if the process on the remote and local machine are the same. In this case, firefox is always started on the machine that first started the process. Meaning, if I start it on the remote machine and then start on the local machine, they are all running on the remote host and vice versa. This is only the case with my acount (admin created in ubuntu at startup). The non-admin account created after the installation does not have the problem. As far as I know this only happens with firefox. I tried it on Ubuntu and Arch and cleared out cache data. The ssh server is Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10

Any kind of help, a reference, link, anything wold be appreciated.

After you login and before you run firefox, check the value of your DISPLAY variable like this:

echo $DISPLAY

It should look something like this:

localhost:10.0

If not, you may have a login script overriding the value set by the ssh daemon. This could cause an X app to display on the local display rather than being forwarded. It would also explain why one accout is having this problem and another is not.

Regards,

Brian Pence

The DISPLAY variable is always localhost:10.0 as set by ssh
I haven't fiddled with any bash login files except /etc/bash.bashrc but it works for all accounts.

The problem that the OP is having is that after making the ssh connection, the program is running locally and not remotely.

Firefox checks if there is another instance of firefox operating on the computer running that display.

If you don't have an instance of firefox open locally, you will have firefox start up as you want. You may need to disable preloading.

I tried an experiment where I quit all instances of Firefox, ssh'ed from my laptop to my desktop and then entered "firefox" in the terminal. I typed in the url "file:///home" to verify that it was running on the remote machine. Then I started firefox on the laptop by clicking on the quickstart icon on the toolbar. This started firefox, but it was still running on the remote machine.

How do I disable preloading??
There's some vague reference to /var/cache

OK I found a reasonable solution. Start firefox with -no-remote option
though I haven't figured out what is different on the non-admin account.
I'm puzzled???

You discovered the best answer. I wish that "firefox --help" would have provided it.