On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Daniel Woods wrote:
> With many years of Unix experience, I've usually just used
> windows and telnet in to my unix boxes for support or
> programming. So my X-windows is limited (2 yrs on HP).
> I've never used remote $DISPLAY settings.
>
> With my monitor problems, if I could just use my NT
> machine to connect to my linux server and 'pretend'
> and use X-windows that way, then cool. I believe
> I have a license to X-win but once tried to configure
> it to a unix box without much success. From my same
> PC, I would also want to remote $DISPLAY when I dual-boot
> into Linux (or from within VMWare).
Microsoft Windows does not use an X Server as it's GUI. Every honest UNIX
(and Linux, too) uses a real X Server to display GUI, which includes
network functionality - displaying the output from programs on a different
computer than the one they're running on. Microsoft did not include such
functionality (yet another example of how Windows fails as a 'network
operating system'), and you need third-party software, such as MI/X or
Exceed (sp?) X servers to display X clients on Windows.
> Please provide tutorial links or explanations on how
> to use $DISPLAY to connect to remote unix/linux boxes.
It's quite simple, really. The environment variable DISPLAY is checked by
all X clients, and they send output to the host/display indicated by that
variable. If you use SSH (from UNIX to UNIX) then most SSH servers will
set that variable automatically and forward X connections for you, no
configuration needed. OpenSSH (used by Mandrake since 7.0) doesn't do
this initially; you'll need to set it up yourself.
If you're not using SSH, then there are two steps involved: on the remote
host, set DISPLAY to "local.hostname:0.0". The two numbers indicate which
display to connect to... 0.0 will work in most every case, however.
Second, on the local host you need to run "xhost +remote.host" which will
enable the remote host to connect to your computer for displaying X
clients.
This is not particualrly secure - by using xhost, you are enabling ANY X
client on the remote host to connect to your computer. Also, X eats more
than it's share of bandwidth. You can use xauth, which is more secure
than xhost for connecting; check the man page for details. Also note that
SSH, if forwarding your connection, will encrypt it, and you won't have to
bother with xhost or $DISPLAY - only your X clients will be displayed.
> How can I set my linux server firewall to allow me
> to remote access it from work (restrict IP) ?
TCP wrappers (/etc/hosts.allow & /etc/hosts.deny).
> When I did a 'msec custom', I believe I turned off
> the ability to do remote $DISPLAY, so how do I reset
> that ?
Can't say, as I don't have Mandrake 7.x installed.
>
> Thanks... Dan.
>
-Matt Stegman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
