Linux in a mostly Windows dev environment

linux-mintwindowsx11

A little background: our shop has traditionally run a Microsoft software stack but now we're planning to use embedded Linux and I find myself in the role of Columbus: conquer the new world. I mention this because it means I lack the context to interpret what you may think is a simple answer. If you can explain things with comparison to how Windows works this will greatly aid comprehension.

If I've understood the idea of X-Windows correctly, an application is an X client and the windowing APIs send/receive UI messages to an X-server via a TCP socket (sends window drawing commands to the X-server and receives mouse and keyboard activity messages from it).

As I understand it, use of sockets means that the app code can run on one Unix box while the UI runs on an X-server executing on (eg) any of

the same computer
another Unix box running X-server on the same network
a Windows box 'W' running X-server on the same network
any box running an X-server anywhere on the internet provided firewalls and routing are appropriately configured to allow the required sockets.

On my desk I have a Linux Mint13 host using the Cinnamon desktop and named ForwardUntoDawn. It is connected to my 192.168.174 network as 35, and my Win7 is on the same network as 11. They can ping each other, and SAMBA allows file sharing between them. I have installed telnetd and sshd on ForwardUntoDawn and I can establish from Win7 telnet and ssh sessions, and authenticate to obtain a command line.

On my Win7 system I have Xming installed with Xming and Xlaunch desktop icons. Running Xlaunch I answer the prompts thus:

Multiple Windows / display 0
Start program: gimp Using SSH (C:\Cygwin\bin\SSH.exe)
Clipboard yes, no font server or params

This momentarily results in a black command window but it vanishes before I can read the message.

Can anyone guide me on next steps, or more appropriate responses to the needs of Xming? (I chose gimp only because I know it's installed and working.)

Note that to use the answer below also read the comments and NOTE you must start your the cygwin xserver using cygwin\bin\startxwin.exe in order to get it to work, I imagine this initialises a few environment variables.

I didn't end up using Xming. After I got the ssh settings set right on the Linux box and succeeded in using the Cygwin tools, I had another go using Xming. Applications launched using Xlaunch would start but then abruptly disappear. The problem did not occur using strictly Cygwin tools.

Best Answer

I don't know what the defaults are for cygwin's SSH.EXE, but for openssh the default is to not enable X11 forwarding.

That default can be overridden by modifying the ssh client's config file (e.g. ~/.ssh/config on a unix/linux box) or by using the -X option on the ssh command line - e.g. ssh -X remotehost gimp

Might be worthwhile checking whether cygwin SSH.exe has the same default and/or the same or similar option.

BTW, what happens when you ssh to the Mint box and then run gimp from the command line? if it doesn't work, try again with -X.

Finally, you may want to try putty as your ssh client on the windows box.

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I think the state of the art for the maximum bandwidth is NX, an X11 protocol compression program. It should perform well with respect to latency too. Try using the Windows NX client and the free NX server on Linux.

If possible, use a direct TCP connection instead of SSH. Of course, this is only viable in a controlled environment with no security worries.

I think in most setups a virtual machine running locally will give you the best latency. Even better, run Emacs and Eclipse under Windows; make them edit remote files, or (for even better results) make them edit local files which you then synchronize with Unison or through a version control system.

Ssh – Accessing Linux server from Windows machine in graphical mode via SSH

You can try to use VNC X server. It uses non-privileged port to communicate and it may be run without any root privileges. To avoid the building of VNC find out what port of it the distro being in use contains (there is a number of options TigerVNC, OpenVNC, RealVNC, e.t.c.).

For example the Fedora 17 has tigervnc-server-minimal package that has everything you need to start a VNC server:

/usr/bin/Xvnc 
/usr/bin/vncconfig 
/usr/bin/vncpasswd 
/usr/share/man/man1/Xvnc.1.gz 
/usr/share/man/man1/vncconfig.1.gz 
/usr/share/man/man1/vncpasswd.1.gz

Download it, extract the binaries and put them into your ~/bin folder for convenience.

First you need to run vncpasswd once at each system to set a password to access your vnc server instance.

Then start the server itself by the command Xvnc and note what display it started (it will print out the info on standard output).

Then you will be setting up a TCP port forwarding with putty to the port with number 5900+<display number>, e.g. for the display :1 you should create a tunnel to port 5901:

putty -ssh -L5901:127.0.0.1:5901 user@host

Then start the VncViewer and connect to the display localhost:1 at your Windows box.

When you are finished don't forget to stop Xvnc server, so it is not wasting the resources at server:

killall Xvnc

The case of aura is a bit more complex as you can't log in directly. If one of your servers allow to set the tunnels to any machine in the LAN, then just create the proper tunnel, say:

putty -ssh -L5901:<ip-of-aura>:5901 user@host

Otherwise, you start the ssh session with aura with port forwarding from the remote shell at aisa or lethe:

ssh -L5901:127.0.0.1:5901 aura

Best Answer

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