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Re: X windows display problem


From: "Meredith Finkelstein" <meredith@www.honeybeerobotics.com>
Reply-To: cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com
To: "Thomas Chadwick" <j_tetazoo@hotmail.com>, cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com, meredith@www.honeybeerobotics.com
Subject: Re: X windows display problem
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 15:41:23 -0400
[snip]

when i ssh and am on the remote host, and i echo the DISPLAY i get nothing.
but i thought this was normal since i'm using the X flag with ssh.
This is not normal. DISPLAY needs a value. If ssh is not assigning one, there is probably something wrong with either ssh at the near end or sshd at the far end.

when i set export the display=<localhost>:0.0 & then run xeyes
then i get the following message
Xlib: connection to "<localhost>:0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

Error: Can't open display: <localhost>:0.0
Try again. From the ssh command-line on the remote machine, the correct value of DISPLAY should be <remotehost>:10.0, NOT <localhost>:0.0 AS YOU HAVE SHOWN HERE. Here are a couple of diagrams to make my point...

With DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 on localhost, and DISPLAY=remotehost:10.0 on remotehost, the XClients on remotehost send their traffic through the encrypted channel (established between ssh and sshd) back to XWin on localhost:

+--------------------+ +------------------------+
| localhost | | remotehost |
+--------------------+ +------------------------+
| | | |
| XWin <---> ssh <---+---(encrypted)---+---> sshd <---> XClient |
| | | |
+--------------------+ +------------------------+


If you try to set DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 on remotehost, the XClients on remotehost try to talk directly to XWin on localhost and don't use the encrypted ssh channel at all:

+--------------------+ +------------------------+
| localhost | | remotehost |
+--------------------+ +------------------------+
| | | |
| XWin <---> ssh <---+---(encrypted)---+---> sshd ---> XClient |
| ^ | | ^ |
| | | | | |
| +----------------+--(unencrypted)--+------------------+ |
| | | |
+--------------------+ +------------------------+


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