Celestial Software

I am attempting to use SSH2 port forwarding to connect to a remote server and run an X application but something is not set up right. After specifying the hostname, I set up SSH2 to forward port 57999 to remote "127.0.0.1" port 5903 and checked X Forwarding. I can connect to the remote server, which is a virtual server on a Linux box running VMWare, get a command line prompt (BASH shell) but no DISPLAY variable is generated. Is the problem on my end or the server end?

[ March 03, 2005, 06:35 PM: Message edited by: Brian T. Pence ]

I'm not sure what you're forwarding with 57999 and 5903. To do X forwarding, all you need to enable is the 'x forwarding' option. If the DISPLAY variable is not set, then the X forwarding option is probably disabled on your server. Check the sshd_config (probably in /etc/ssh)

You'll still need to be running some kind of X software on the client side. I use xwin32 myself (www.xwin32.com)

Let me know if you need more info

Brian

Our sysadmin for the remote box checked the /etc/ssh/sshd_config and found:
#AllowTcpForwarding yes
#GatewayPorts no
X11Forwarding yes
#X11DisplayOffset 10
#X11UseLocalhost yes

He changed it to:
AllowTcpForwarding yes
#GatewayPorts no
X11Forwarding yes
X11DisplayOffset 10
X11UseLocalhost yes

He then restarted sshd, but I still don't get a display variable when I log in. Any suggestions?

And you're sure that the 'x forwarding' option is enabled in Absolute? Be sure it is enabled *before* you begin the connection.

It would be very strange to *NOT* get a DISPLAY variable if both the server and the client are both enabled. Can you double-check and make sure that he restarted the sshd?

Also check that there isn't something in your login scripts that would un-set or re-set the variable

Any word?

Brian

Brian,
Yes, figured it out. The guy that installed Linux on the remote server had 2 configuration files, one in /etc and one in /user/local/etc and ssh was using the one in /usr/local/etc. Fixed the files and it now works. Very slow, but that's a different problem. At least now I have a connection. Thank you for your help.

Don

Don,

There are some updates in 3.80 that eliminate some speed issues with X11 forwarding that were present in 3.63. You might want to give it a try:

http://www.celestialsoftware.net/telnet/AbsoluteTelnet3.80.exe