Hi all,

I'm fairly new to the linux scene, and have been working on getting a secure tunnel over ssh to bring the GNOME gui desktop of my centOS servers over to my desktop (without having to log on locally first, which is why im avoiding using VNC with port forwarding as a security method). So far, the best amount of success I've had is installing CYGWIN on my XP box, and then using putty to setup an xforward session over ssh. I can then use the command line to launch individual applications (such as "firefox &") or to launch a desktop environment (which I would prefer instead of launching things individually). I've used two methods to launch my GDE:

"Gnome-session &": typically horrible results... Everything comes up slowly, tons of error messages, sometimes repeat error messages on my gnome desktop about unrecognizable hardware. About 90% of the time, I'm left with a dead desktop that won't respond to user inputs , even if i can see the applications/systems menu.

"Gnome-panel &": Appears to launch the exact same interface as gnome-session, and all three panels (top, bottom and desktop) tend to work correctly - sometimes the desktop doesn't come up, but i don't care as much about that one. I'm able to navigate all menus and launch any application I want from that point

However, One thing has been bugging me and made me unwilling to rest on this project.. and that's the fact that both of these methods result in a broken up mess. The desktop always launches in three separate components - Top, Bottom and Desktop, and they are never in the correct position. They usually launch as thin bars that span both of my monitors, and I am unable to use them until I resize. When I launch applications, they each open in their own separate window, which appears as another x server window on my taskbar. So I'm wondering if anyone knows how I can force these 3 windows to integrate and show as a proper desktop. Ideally this would appear as it's own autonomous window (similar to Windows remote desktop) which I could then manipulate as I see fit.

Any ideas on this one? haven't found much mention about it online.

Thanks!

BTW:
Running XP sp3 with CYGWIN and an xserver session. Using putty with xforwarding allowed in Tunnels using the XDM-Authorization authentication protocol. Connecting to servers that are for the most part running CentOS 5.2