Does anyone know how to get a GUI when connecting to a remote host? I've been able to get one in the past on different computers for different applications but on my own computer I can't seem to get one. I'm trying to connect to a University computer to run programs like Matlab and Solidworks remotely as actually purchasing it with all the correct block sets and additional software is prohibitively expensive on a student's budget. There is no problem connecting to the computers remotely yet whenever I try to run Matlab it gives me a text based interface.

Is there a certain protocol or program I should be connecting with to get a GUI? In the past I've solely connected through SSH. I don't know if the computers I want to connect to have some sort of VNC or not. Even if they do I don't want to remotely see the entire desktop, I want to interact with a GUI as if the program was run locally on my computer.

My computer is dual-booted with SuSE 9.1 and Windows XP Home and connects over DSL. The operating systems I can chose to connect to are Windows 2000, Red Hat, Debian (Progeny I think), and Solaris.

Investigate the -X option to ssh.

Need to set it up within Control Panel, and nowhere else...
Except maybe opening a port on the firewall

I get an error:

% matlab
Xlib: connection to "localhost:10.0" refused by server
Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
Warning: Unable to open display localhost:10.0, MATLAB is starting without a display.
You will not be able to display graphics on the screen.

After that it continues in text mode. I looked online a bit but was unable to find an answer in the time I have. A promising site I found is: http://yolinux.com/MINI-HOWTO/Remote-X-Apps.html

Have you tried running this from a console window? (as opposed to a true console)

In response to Riddick: If you're using ssh tunneling (as you should on an untrusted network) then you do not need to open a port on the firewall (If you're talking about a separate hardware firewall). It is true that the X server needs to receive data on a particular port, but ssh pulls that information all the way to your computer. The iptables (linux firewall) might pose a problem, though I doubt it. If you think this may be the case, you can temporarily disable the SuSE firewall with "SuSEfirewall2 stop" (particularly if you're behind another form of protection.)


If I understand this right, the campus computer is trying to connect to the 10th X server, doesn't find it, and gives up. I think the 10th server doesn't exist, but is used by ssh as a place it can listen to forward stuff back to you.

In order for X forwarding to work, /etc/ssh/sshd_config on their computer must have a:
X11Forwarding yes
line. You're own /etc/ssh/ssh_config (different file) must have:
ForwardX11 yes
(though sigsegv suggestion to use a capital -X looks like it can bypass your own config file)
If their server doesn't allow X Forwarding, then I'd say you're out of luck. (unless you want to telnet in, and open a port on any firewall you have - risky).