I don't usually ask dumb questions but I suspect this is one.

I am testing two Mandrake 9.2 Linux VMs on my windows servers. How do I open an XWindow session on one when I am signed into the other? I need this so several QA users can exercise our new application running on one machine from their Linux sessions once I have them set up. The VNC things seems to require that I sign on start the service and walk away leaving my session signed on. That won't do.

well how do you want it to run?, do ya want the app to be run on the sever but displayed on a difrent one?, or do you want to run and display the app on the same server?

OK. This app is a GUI interface used to control a background process that we run on the server. So it must run there. We have several people who need to be able to run the application on the server from their respective Linux workstations.

1. Make sure the SSH daemon on the server (the host running the application you want to run from other locations) is configured to allow X forwarding. This is usually done through the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Make sure the "X11Forwarding" line is not commented out (everything after a pound sign - # - is ignored) and that it is set to "yes". This is what it should look like:Restart the SSHD service to make sure the new settings are applied.

2. From the other machine, simply type ssh -X username@hostname to open up an SSH connection to the server. The -X flag indicates you want X forwarded too so you can launch GUI applications. Log in and launch the program like you use to. The graphical window should pop up on your local computer as if you were running the application locally (remember - you're not!). Append an ampersand (the "&" character) to the end of the command line to launch the program to get the prompt back and be able to launch other commands on the remote computer. When done, exit the GUI program and type exit or hit Ctrl+D to log out.


Håkan

Ok That works. I From the warning I receive regarding fonts, I assume that we have to install the fonts on the workstation.

Here is a curiosity question. Can this be done at the desktop level? As in show the KDE signon screen from the server on their workstations? I saw this done using xterminals a few years back.

Yes, you can run X remotely but it's insecure and often quite slow. I have never set that up myself though, so I can't really comment on it, but you should configure your X login manager (GDM, KDM) on the server to accept incoming XDMP connections. That's a start at least.


Håkan