Article -- Running Remote Windows Apps on Linux

Connecting to a Remote Xwindows Session

Xwindows is an interesting system. It consists of two parts, the server which runs the applications and the client that displays them. By this design a lot of interesting possibilities arise. What I will focus on in this article is displaying an application on a local computer that is running on a remote server.

You will need to have Xwindows install and functioning on both systems; this is out of the scope of this article.

Xwindows forwarding is off by default so you will need to activate it on the server. This is done by simply editing the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file and adding the line

X11forwarding yes

On the client machine open a terminal window and run these commands.

xhost +
ssh -X remote.server.com
xterm

First the xhost + command will allow remote X servers to connect to this client. Otherwise you will get permission denied errors. The second command starts a shh session and -X tells the remote server to redirect any Xwindows traffic back to your client system. After this is done you should be able to run any program you want and have the results displayed on your clients computer screen.

If you get into trouble running these commands, seeing error messages about not being able to connect to the remote host. You may need to be specific on the ip address of the client machine. After you log in with ssh type this additional command to tell the server where to redirect the Xwindows traffic.

export DISPLAY=client.ip:0

If you still have problems you may have a firewall setting preventing communication. Xwindows uses port TCP 6000 to send traffic.