Remote X windows - very slow
 

I finally figured out how to get remote X windows working. I have Mandrake 9.1 running at home, then from my office I can start an X Windows session through an SSH tunnel using cygwin. Unfortunately I cant install Linux at the office computers, so I have been using cygwin.

My problem is that the remote X Windows session seems very slow. If I just use a shell it is fast, it is pointless to use XWindows for just a shell as I can use SSH for that. However, when I start a gnome session, the desktop is very slow.

In the past I have worked with remote XWindows, connected to a Sun workstation, running a client on Windows. It seemed to run very fast.

Is there something that I can do to optimize the speed, or is it gnome that is so slow?

Thanks, Eric

It depends on the bandwidth mostly... It should be quite OK with two broadband, but if the machines are far from each other, you may not get great speed. When you're running an remote X session, the amount of data send is really big.

Running a remote X session is a good idea in LAN. Outside it doesn't work well.

You can't do much. The only thing is that small programs (and small window managers) should work better than big ones. But I can't tell you if it'll work fast.

Thanks Mara,

I found that when connected on a local LAN that it was rather slow, and over a high speed Internet connection it was very slow. My experience in the past has been really fast response with remote X. However I was connected to a Sun Workstation running solaris.

Eric

You need to check how much bandwidth it consumes (iptraf, for example), maybe there's a bottleneck somewhere? Are you able to transfer a big file using FTP, for example, just to see how much bandwidth you can use? Plus, check how much processor power is used (maybe one of the machines can't handle it).

Try using X Windows only !
 

Its Easy to see X being very Sluggish becuz of the bandwidth problem ! The better way to get a better system response is to use x11 only with xterm or if need more features then you could use twm , uwm or maybe even write your own wm for linux like i did !

Avinash Shankar:D

Thanks for the replies avios and Mara.

I have tested the bandwidth and it is not a problem. I uploaded some files using FTP and it was very fast. The processor is a 2.4Ghz and it seems to be idle most of the time, so its not a processor issue. The system has 128Mb of memory, and it appears to be all used up. Not sure how to properly analyze that??

Anyway, I think that remote X is not the best way to do remote administration. I loaded Webmin, that seems to be a much better tool. Very fast secure, and gives me a simple interface to all of the servers as well as a secure shell.

Thanks for your help,
Eric

If you're curious (Webmin is a good tool, I agree :) ), run top on the machine and then start forwarding X. Check how much processor power it takes. If you use a resource-consuming window manager (like KDE or GNOME) 128MB RAM may be not enough for the wm and encryption at the same time.

Mara my apologies... the problem was not with x windows it was with the cygwin install.

I have re-installed cygwin and now I am getting very good response with remote X. With my original cygwin install I had installed everything (not recommended). This time I selected only the basics to create an ssh tunnel and to run x windows. It is much faster.

Thanks for your suggestions, Eric

Interesting problem...Do you know which part/application caused this?

Mara:

I am not sure why, but I can speculate. First of all I was using a high resolution for the display; I lowered it to 1024/768. Second, there may have been a bug with the "Cygwin" Gnome install.

With the original Cygwin install I tried to install the Gnome window manager and the install seemed to fail. I still had local X Windows working, but it was not Gnome. Since I tried to connect to a remote server, then execute a "gnome-session", I think that there was some confusion between the local X Windows and the remote.

I am not sure how likely the local x windows may have caused a slowdown of a remote session, but it is a possibility.

Now the remote X on the local network is quite fast, almost like working locally. With a remote desktop it is still slow, but not as slow.

Eric

Thanks. :)