Arch Linux

JRMoore

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] X11Forwarding is enabled but $DISPLAY isn't defined.

Hi, I wondered whether this fell under Applications and DEs or not, if somewhere else would be more appropriate please move the thread over there.

I'm trying to set up remote forwarding of X11 applications from an Arch VM, SSH was already installed so I just enabled it service. Logging onto the machine works fin, be it from Linux or Windows (simple SSH sessions) and public keys are also working as expected. However I can't for the life of me have graphical applications forwarded to the remote machine.

X11Forwarding is enabled in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and I've tried combinations of the other two configs to no avail, X11DisplayOffset and X11UseLocalhost. Whenever I SSH -X onto the machine, the DISPLAY env var is unset, locally is perfectly set and contains ":0"

What am I missing? Is there anything else configuration-wise that needs to be done? The machine doesn't currently have much of a fully fledged desktop, I mean there's Cinnamon and graphical logging is handled by lightdm, but there aren't barely any graphical program installed. I'm posting the package list of what's installed if it helps you guys see what's up: https://pastebin.mozilla.org/ER92z1PG

Thanks for everything.

PS. There's a Buster box I can connect to and X11 forwarding seems to work fine, I don't have admin privileges but their SSHd config is essentially the same in that regard, they're just using way older versions of everything.

Last edited by JRMoore (2022-05-04 20:31:50)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,498

Website

Re: [SOLVED] X11Forwarding is enabled but $DISPLAY isn't defined.

X11Forwarding is enabled in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and I've tried combinations of the other two configs to no avail, X11DisplayOffset and X11UseLocalhost.

And has sshd been restarted on the server since these changes were made to the config?

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

JRMoore

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] X11Forwarding is enabled but $DISPLAY isn't defined.

Answering the question... Yep, the whole machine actually, several times between trial and error with the settings just for good measure.

But nevermind, I just can't read... going -vvv on the ssh connection line actually pointed me to the mistake... and looking at the optdepends and installed packages confirmed it:

optdepends=('xorg-xauth: X11 forwarding' ...

Last edited by JRMoore (2022-05-04 20:31:29)