Re: RH 7.3

[Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw at openminddev dot net>]

On Wed, 25 Sep 2002 10:16 pm, Benjamin Simmons wrote:
> I am getting an error that makes me assume that I have some kind of X
> permission wrong.
>
> I edited the following files:
> /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config
> /etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess
> /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf
>
>
> Is there something else I must do?
>
> If I ssh to the remote machine: ssh -X -l username ipaddress
> The current message I am getting is:
>
> "PAM authentication has failed cannot start the X server.  Perhaps you
> do
> not have console ownership. . . . . . "
>

I think you are confusing two completely different ways of running X over a 
network.

You can
a) use xdm/gdm/kdm
b) use ssh -X

a) xdm/gdm/kdm is a little work to set up on the server side, but it makes 
client side configuration trivial.  Once set up correctly, XWin.exe -query 
<server.ip> is basically all each host needs to do.  Its main downside is 
that it is inherently insecure, as all communcation between the workstation 
and the server is unencrypted, including any passwords typed into dialog 
boxes.

However, I can send details on the full xdm/gdm/kdm thing if you like.

b) ssh -X works best if you already have a fully running X setup on your local 
machine, and just want to run specific programs on the server.  However, with 
a little bit of work it may be possible to get a scripted secure Xsession 
running, which starts up KDE or GNOME on the server rather than locally.  My 
attempts to do this simply have only partly worked.  As far as I can tell, 
both 'startkde' and 'gnome-session' expect to be run locally (at least on 
RH7.3), and have some trouble with the SSH connection, although they mostly 
work.  The best option seems to be to comment out the 'twm' line in the 
Cygwin-XFree startxwin.sh/bat and change the '/bin/bash' in the xterm line to 
'/usr/bin/sh -X user@server' and then run either gnome or kde from the 
resulting xterm.

Rasjid.