Arch Linux

zoqaeski

Member

From: /earth/australia/.

Registered: 2009-09-30

Posts: 132

Remote X sessions

I've installed Arch on a ten-year old computer we had lying around, and as far as I can tell all went smoothly. Due to a lack of desk space, I'd like to run the machine in a headless mode; I can remotely administer it through SSH, but I'd also like to be able to run X applications and the like so I can compare configuration and operation of it with my day-to-day Ubuntu install. Is it possible to tunnel an entire X session through an SSH or similar connection (or even XDMCP — the machines are on their own local network) so that I can effectively connect two machines to the one monitor and keyboard (and mouse) without hardware like a KVM switch?

Ideally I want to use the old computer as a sandbox in the hope that by the time I get enough hardware upgrades to the Ubuntu machine I will have learned enough to replace it with Arch.

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Remote X sessions

Maybe you want to setup a vnc server in the remote machine. It should work really well over local network.

---

R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

Teshadael

Member

Registered: 2008-04-06

Posts: 29

Re: Remote X sessions

You are looking for X11 Forwarding via ssh.

Last edited by Teshadael (2009-12-05 16:16:26)

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

Website

Re: Remote X sessions

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tightvnc

---

CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packages • Zsh and other configs

zoqaeski

Member

From: /earth/australia/.

Registered: 2009-09-30

Posts: 132

Re: Remote X sessions

VNC is almost what I'm after; it's a little slow but I've only got a slow router and connection between them.

GNOME on Ubuntu Jaunty comes with a viewer (Vinagre) so all I need to do is start vncserver on the Arch machine and it works. Does anyone know if there is a way that I can send VNC's output to a different virtual console (e.g. C-A-F8 or whatever) so that I can easily run the two in fullscreen mode and switch with a simple keybinding?

jowilkin

Member

Registered: 2009-05-07

Posts: 243

Re: Remote X sessions

NX works better/faster than VNC in my experience (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FreeNX).  As Teshadael mentions, you can run any X applications with ssh forwarding.  This works fine for most things, but you will need to know the command line name of the app to launch it.  For a full version of the desktop environment, I prefer NX.

Last edited by jowilkin (2009-12-06 04:41:18)

zoqaeski

Member

From: /earth/australia/.

Registered: 2009-09-30

Posts: 132

Re: Remote X sessions

NX looks promising, but I can't get it working properly. I followed the tutorials on the wiki (and the corresponding articles in the Ubuntu documentation) but it spits the dummy telling me that the authentication failed, so I'm assuming that the keys aren't being sourced correctly. It took a bit of playing around to get that far, but it doesn't seem to be working at all now.

How did others get NX set up properly? Installing went fine, setting up the keys seemed to work, but transferring them to the Ubuntu machine doesn't seem to have worked properly. Either that, or it's just being weird.

owain

Member

Registered: 2009-08-24

Posts: 251

Re: Remote X sessions

GNOME on Ubuntu Jaunty comes with a viewer (Vinagre) so all I need to do is start vncserver on the Arch machine and it works. Does anyone know if there is a way that I can send VNC's output to a different virtual console (e.g. C-A-F8 or whatever) so that I can easily run the two in fullscreen mode and switch with a simple keybinding?

You should be able to launch any program (i.e. Vinagre) in a separate X session on the Ubuntu box, with the following script (which I got from the Ubuntu forums):

#!/bin/bash
DISPLAY=:1
X :1 -ac -terminate &
sleep 2
$*

Start it with scriptname programname.  I sometimes use this for Windows XP in Virtualbox, rather than having a fullscreen instance take up one Openbox desktop and be in the way when I want to cycle through the others.

Last edited by owain (2009-12-10 12:11:16)

owain

Member

Registered: 2009-08-24

Posts: 251

Re: Remote X sessions

Deleted: double-post

Last edited by owain (2009-12-10 12:11:02)