Remote Display

One can display remote graphical applications on their local screen using vnc, NX, Xephyr, or just ssh -X.

Table of Contents Xephyr Installation Usage Method 1 Method 2 See also

Xephyr

Installation

In Debian, type

 $ sudo apt-get install xserver-xephyr

Usage

Method 1

To run Xephyr on your local machine and receive remote X client connections to your local Xephyr window, do the following.

 local-machine:$ (echo -n "add :1 . "; mcookie) | xauth
 local-machine:$ Xephyr :1 -reset -terminate &
 local-machine:$ DISPLAY=:1 ssh -Y username@remotemachine gnome-session

Method 2

To run Xephyr on the remote machine and forward the Xephyr window to your local machine, do the following.

 local-machine:$ ssh -X username@remotemachine
 remotemachine:$ (echo -n "add :1 . "; mcookie) | xauth
 remotemachine:$ Xephyr :1 -reset -terminate &
 remotemachine:$ export DISPLAY=:1
 remotemachine:$ gnome-session

Or simply

 ssh -X username@remotemachine "(echo -n 'add :1 . '; mcookie) | xauth; Xephyr :1 -reset -terminate & DISPLAY=:1 gnome-session"

Unfortunately, this requires you to trust the user account on the remote machine (because it can start other programs to interact with your local X session, and could do keylogging).

This method also seems slower to update the screen and uses much more (more than twice as much?) bandwidth than Method 1.

See also

• http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/01/07/xephyr/