Ok, so I am taking a C++ class at my college and we connect to the servers through SSH to do the labs. In the lab we can open up on editor in another window by using "&". But when I try to do the same thing at home, the command doesn't open the editor in another window, it doesn't even start the program, it just display a number and takes me back to the command prompt. I think the reason for this is that in class we had to enable "tunneling", but I can't figure out how to do this on my home computer. As a note, in class we use X-win 32 under windows 2000 to connect to the servers. I'm using SuSE 10.0 at home, and TELNETTing to connect to the schools servers. Thanks for any help.

You probably need to use the -X flag when you first open the ssh connection. That allows X forwarding so graphical programs will be displayed on your local monitor.

or "-Y" on newer versions of SSH. Also, your questions doesn't make it clear if you're using SSH or Telnet.

What I am doing is using a telnet comand to login to a non ssh server and then once login in to that server using ssh to login to the ssh secure server. How exactly do I use the flags. I mean would I just type "ssh servername -x" or is it done in someother way? Thanks for the help.

If I understand you correctly, you're not going to be able to make this work. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this diagram:

You -> Telnet server -> SSH server


The problem is the telnet connection between you and the SSH server. As far as I know, telnet isn't capable of performing X forwarding, so it doesn't matter how you connect to the SSH server because telnet will get in the way. What you really want to do is log in directly to the SSH server. Can I ask why you aren't doing this?

By the way the flag is -X, not -x. other than that you have the command correct.

OK, so I have tried to just connect to the isengard server with the ssh command but nothing happens, it doesn't ask for my password, all it does is the cursor moves down a line and blinks. I've tried using kssh but I'm having the same problem there as well. Could it be a firewall issue, is there a setting that I must enable in order to use ssh? Thanks for the help.

It actually could be any number of things here. Probably the best thing to do is run ssh with the -v option, which causes a lot more information to be logged. To do this you would need to run ssh from the command line, but that isn't such a bad thing. I'm guessing kssh is hiding useful information. Have a look in your syslog and messages file and see if ssh has complained at all. Without some additional clues, we're really going to be shooting in the dark.

Where are my syslog and message files? I'm pretty new to linux and I'm still figuring out the file system.

if you ever need to find a specific file you can type
locate <filename>
logfiles live in /var/log
anyhow with the ssh thing the best solution would be to connect directly to the machine on which you need to run code. I don't know how things work at your college but you might be able to use virtual private networking to effectively appear on the colleges network thus bypassing the (suspected) firewall issue. then you should be able to ssh easily using -Y to forward X. Of course this all depends on whether your college provides this service.

edit: my assumption is that the college has a firewall which is preventing you access