Shabir Imam’s Blog

How to run remote X application on Linux

June 16, 2010 at 1:05 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The X Window System (commonly X or X11) is  a application and network protocol which provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for network computers.You’re using two computers.

You’re using the X window system of the first to type to and look at. You’re using the second to do some important graphical work. You want the second to show its output on the display of the first. The X window system makes this possible. Here, the first computer is X server and second computer is X client.  X server typically runs on user’s console

Configuring X server and client

The following configuration is working fine for Fedora Core 8. Different distributions may have different configurations and settings.

Configuring X server

1) Install X11 package, if its not already installed

#rpm -qa |grep X11

if not installed, install through yum or sources. Using yum,

#yum install xorg-x11*

2) X server should be running on server machine.

#ps aux |grep X

If it not running, start it manually.

#X &

3) X server should  listen on port 6000.

#netstat -an |grep 6000

if its not listening, check whether 6000 port is open or not

#nmap -p 6000

If not open, open is using command

# nc -l 6000

3) Allow Xclient to access Xserver

#xhost +

This will allow Xclient from any host to connect to Xserver. You can add paticular IP also, instead of allowing everyone (xhost +192.168.16.1)

4) Add the following line DisallowTCP=false under security field in /etc/gdm/custom.conf file. After adding, the part of the file should look like

[security]
DisallowTCP=false

Restat the gdm service

#gdm-restart

Configuring X client

logon to Xclient through ssh. then set the DISPLAy environment variable

#export DISPLAY=<yourXserverIP>:0.0

Now, if you run any GUI application, it should display on Xserver machine.

You can try,

#xterm&

or your any GUI application