Re: how to connect client xserver to networked host?
Ken,
Take a look at SSH. It would get you a couple of things you probably
need in your "headless" webserver configuration :
1. Secured connections to your headless system from anywhere.
2. X forwarding over that same secured connection.
X forwarding allows you to have the base X stuff and X applications loaded
on the webserver and after logging in via an SSH connection (like Telnet,
only secure...), you can have them display on your local machine.
You set your DISPLAY shell environment variable with (for bash) on the
webserver with :
export DISPLAY=yourdesktopmachine:0.0
-- then run the program you want to see appear on your regular desktop
machine, and voila! Works great. Make sure to put it in the background
if you want your shell back after starting it.
Also look into the switch options for SSH for compression if you're
connecting to your web server over a slow data link. You can get all the
way up to bzip -9 level compression for your connections, which is nice,
but eats a lot of processor time on each end. Best thing is to look at
the manpage for that yourself and decide what works best in your network
environment.
With SSH installed, you can disable telnetd completely and close off
one more point of possible non-authorized access to your headless
system... very nice.
If you need access to the webserver from Windows systems, check out Tera
Term and the SSH extentions written overseas for it. It works pretty
well, and I use it regularly without trouble. There also used to be a
free Windows X server (so you could display X apps from the headless box
to a Windows machine...) at www.microimages.com, but I've heard rumor that
it's not free anymore ... :(
Hopefully this is helpful!
On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Kenneth Scharf wrote:
> I know it is possible to run an xserver on a local host computer, and
> then connect to a window manager and aps running on a networked host.
> Question is how to set this up? I'd like to start an X session between
> two computers (I guess this is what an Xterminal is).
>
> I have a 'headless' computer running apache web server which I admin
> over the network. I would like to do this via an Xterm.
+-----------------------------------+--------------------------------+
| Nate Duehr - nate@natetech.com | Support Amateur Radio & Linux! |
| Private Pilot, Telephony Engineer | Ham Callsign: N0NTZ |
| UNIX Hack, Perl Hack, Tech-Freak | Grid Square: DM79 |
| | "May the Source be with you." |
+-----------------------------------+--------------------------------+
| HamRadio and Linux mailing lists available for interested parties: |
| http://www.natetech.com/mailman/listinfo |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Reply to: