Browser-based X Server for Remote Access
 

Hello,

I am using beagle on my server to index the meta tags for a bunch of pdf files. I would like to be able to search these meta tags from a web browser on my website and for others to have access to this resource as well. Since I could not find a good web-based search engine that I would install to index pdf meta tags, I've decided to try beagle. It works well, but I need to be able to access it remotely without installing something like Xming on a remote computer. Do you know of a java or flash application that will let me start a remote x session? I already looked into WeirdX but the jar never did anything when I tried running it multiple times with my up-to-date java. Any ideas on other programs that would let me do this?

Thanks

VNC includes a Java applet, but a word of warning - you *must* use SSL, as neither VNC nor X provide strong encryption. I've seen several search plugins for Rails that use the Sphinx or Ferret search engines, and no doubt that there are equivalents for other frameworks, so if you have a little programming knowledge the tidiest solution may be to knock together a small Web application.

Thanks for the reply. How would I go about setting up a java-based VNC? What VNC program is written in java? I don't ahve too much programming knowledge so I wouldn't be able to create my own webapp unfortunately. I did find this program called WeirdMind: http://www.spiro.fisica.unipd.it/ser...ind/weirdmind/
but after I successfully log in and try to start an x application (ie xeyes) with x11 forwarding enabled, it gives this error:
Failed port open (X11 connection from 127.0.0.1 port 51728) : localhost: 6000 (#1)
Any ideas?

By strange coincidence, this article was posted today:

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/557

It explains how to install a ready-made Web-based file search interface on your server. The Debian Administration site is brilliant for useful little articles like this...

WRT WeirdMind, I couldn't make it work either, and since development on it had stopped I wrote it off. VNC itself includes a Java applet, so once you have set up VNC you can point your browser at the appropriate port on the server, and off you go. Again, the lack of built-in encryption unfortunately makes this unsuitable for use over the Internet.

If you do want to do more with VNC, my own notes on setting it up are here:

http://www.elsn.org/main/VncOnLinux/