Starting an X11 client on another machine, without ssh

[Benjamin Scott]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Bill Freeman <f at ke1g.mv.com> wrote:
> 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.

  I never used anything by the name of "xon" (that I recall), but I
think just about everyone had a similar wrapper around rsh/rexec back
then.  All you really need to do is start an xterm.  Your shell's
startup files will handle the rest of the environment.

  Hideously insecure, of course, but we did that a lot back then.  And
sometimes got burned later.

> It seems like ssh is overkill for talking to a VM on your own box.

  Possibly.  On the other hand, are you hurting for CPU cycles?  If
not, there's something to be said for a solution which is (1)
consistent everywhere and (2) already working.  There's also something
to be said for a solution which will remain secure when your
configuration changes and the formerly isolated VM is exposed to the
public Internet, despite "that will never happen".  :-)

-- Ben