Replacing NCD terminal with SuSE 10 to contact AIX host.
 

Hello all,

First thread and new user. As the subject points to, am currently replacing NCD X terminal with a SuSE 10 linux system to contact an AIX 4.3 server that is running the program. I am sure this has been done many times with many different flavors of linux and I have done some searching but found no definitive answers on the correct setup for the SuSE linux box as an Xterminal, nothing more than a display for I/O. If another thread exists please let me know. Both systems, the AIX and SuSE have xdm installed, and both machines are connected through the integrated ethernet cards and both can be pinged from each other with no problem. The set-up to turn the SuSE into an X terminal that I have is vague. Since the NCD contacted the AIX server for its bootfile, the IP address of the NCD and AIX server was set on the NCD, as well as the location of the bootfile located on the AIX system, I thought the setup would be straight forward. I have configured the SuSE box to have the old NCD IP address, but when configuring the xdm on the SuSE box what should be the entry for the RX_RHOST parameter, the AIX IP address? And should the runlevel of the SuSE box be runlevel 2? Thanks in advance for the time and efforts.;)

Later,
Paul

Boot the SuSE host to runlevel 5. The X server will come up. Use a terminal emulator (such as Terminal or Konsole for Gnome or KDE respectively) to get a bash shell. Use
to attach to the AIX host, just as if you were connecting from the NCD terminal.

--- rod.

Thanks for the reply. The AIX host does not have ssh package installed. After further investigation it turns out that the problem was with the display environment variable, and the SuSE not listening to port 6000. I set the correct display IP and the SuSE to listen on port 6000, now they communicate. However I am still unable to display the program properly. I start the program on the AIX, a new window is opened by root on the SuSE, but the display is black, nothing visible. When I stop the program on the AIX, the window opened by root on the SuSE goes away, so I am confident that they are communicating properly. I will now look into the video card/driver to see if that is the problem. If anyone else has any other input I welcome it. Thanks again for the help and efforts.

Later,
Paul

Do X applications run properly on the local desktop ? If so, I don't think you should attribute the fault to the local video driver. It is possible that the X server is not providing the necessary visual modes that the X client is requesting (I think that's the right jargonology; I always get a bit lost when it comes to sorting out those issues).

I assume you must be making your connection to the remote AIX host using telnet, then? You should be aware of the inherent security risks associated with this practice. That is why, as you found out, X servers by default do not accept connections from the network these days. If you use an SSH connection, you can relieve yourself from configuring the X server to accept network connections, by using SSH to tunnel the X traffic back to your local X server. You don't need to fuss with $DISPLAY, because the X tunnel set this up for you, and you get the benefit of encryption on the wire. Strongly recommend this method.

If there is a local X console on the AIX host, do X application run properly there? When you log into the AIX host, and have the proper arrangements that X traffic requires, you can run xdpyinfo. It will query the X server, and report all sorts of information. You may be able to detect something useful, or if not, post the results here (in [CODE] tags please), and some here may be able to make sense of it.

--- rod.