Starting an X11 client on another machine, without ssh

[Jerry Feldman]

On 03/22/2010 04:39 PM, mark wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Bill Freeman <f at ke1g.mv.com
> <mailto:f at ke1g.mv.com>> wrote:
>
>     Way back when I was at Digital (as it then was) and before, we
>     used to have
>     a tool called 'xon'.  It took as an argument the DNS name or IP
>     address of
>     a server on the net, connected to it, started a shell or
>     optionally specified
>     command, with the DISPLAY environment variable all set up, and
>     maybe permissions
>     as well (probably with xhost rather than .Xauthority).
>
>     Googling doesn't seem to turn up xon, so it was either a local
>     tool, or it
>     has long fallen out of favor.  Maybe it was rsh based.
>
>     Does anyone remember this thing?  It seems like ssh is overkill
>     for talking
>     to a VM on your own box.
>
>     (And having figured out how to get rid of the -nolisten TCP when
>     the X server
>     is started, ssh's -X or -Y are certainly overkill.)
>
>     Bill
>
>
> At a previous job I got to work on a couple of DEC Alphas running DU
> 4.02g, and we made some use of xon.
>
> Googling various combinations of "motif +xon" and "Xwindows +xon" and
> "common desktop environment" +xon turned up a few links with
> references to xon the connectivity program and not just xon a.k.a.
> ctrl-Q, including this gem from the past:
>
> http://pauillac.inria.fr/~lang/hotlist/free/use/jameson/
> <http://pauillac.inria.fr/%7Elang/hotlist/free/use/jameson/>
I don't ever remember using xon while I was at Digital/Compaq/HP. The
basic issue was that I would rsh or telnet into the systems. My .kshrc
had logic in it to set the DISPLAY variable. Basically, the way X works,
is that it uses whatever the DISPLAY envronment variable is set to.
While teaching Linux, one exercise I would do is to have my students run
xeyes on their neighbor's system (assuming that xhost conveyed the
proper permission). However since ssh sets up a tunnel, you need to
explicitly tell ssh to allow the x protocol.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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