Having trouble making ssh X-windows tunnels work...

[benburch]

Hey folks!

I have a Mac here with OSX, and XDarwin X-Windows server which works great locally.

Remotely I have Debian Linux servers.

I edited the sshd config file on the remote server to say "yes" for X tunnelling and then did a /etc/init.d/ssh reload

But when I ssh -X to that server, DISPLAY is still not set.

What am I likely to be missing?

Thanks!

[bemildred]

1. The exact syntax depends a bit on the shell you use

on the Debian servers. The basic problem is that
you need to set the DISPLAY variable in the shell
that runs on the Debian machine when you "ssh -X"
on the OSX box. I assume you want to run various
X applications on the Debian boxes and host them on
the X server on the OSX machine.

I would do something like this:

ssh -X '/bin/csh DISPLAY=osx:0 -c "debian X application"'

You might have to fiddle with those quotes, I'm not sure if
that's perfect.

You could also use the ssh "user@hostname" argument to get
a specific user on the Debian box with the DISPLAY variable
set appropriately in the .rc file for that user.

You can also run a nested server (Xnest) on the Debian box
via a shell and host it on the OSX machine, and then just run
things from a remote shell on the Debian box having set
DISPLAY manually there.

Does this make any sense to you?

[benburch]

2. Makes sense...

But does not seem to want to work. In the past when I have used an SSH tunnel for X, DISPLAY got set up automagically. I'm going to try Xnest

[benburch]

3. Solved it...

Somehow, the stuff that got installed for Xnest included whatever was missing to get DISPLAY to set itself up properly...