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Re: X server running on a different machine [Re: Wanted: a special purpose Debian installer]



On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 10:46:01PM -0400, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote:
> On 2021-06-28 10:12 p.m., Rick Thomas wrote:
> > I'd love to be able to do that!  E.g. a headless machine with plenty of RAM and CPU power to run Mate, but located in a locked building on the other side of campus.
> > 
> > What do I need to install to do that?  And what are the configuration options?

> There's plenty of book you can find by searching on Google with the
> subject "X11 architecture" or something similar.
> 
> Simply made,
> You have the server (the part the display on a screen, ex all the
> xserver-xorg-*)
> and
> You have the client (the software that ask stuff to be displayed, ex : GIMP)
> Plus you have a window manager that give a "look" to the windows example
> Gnome / KDE / TWM...

You also probably want a Display Manager package, configured to use XDMCP.

> What will make it possible to choose where the client display is by
> setting DISPLAY variable.

That would be a heavily piecemeal approach, and there's a bit more to it
than that.

If you're trying to do this without full XDMCP sessions, an easier
approach to running one-off X11 clients remotely would be X11 forwarding
over ssh.  Simply make sure X11 forwarding is enabled on the server's
sshd_config, and then "ssh -X" from the client to the server, and run
the single program(s) you want to run.

(Avoid ANY proposed solution that talks about xhost.  Seriously.)

I still think they're looking for XDMCP sessions, though.


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