X11 Server Windows
The X Window System (commonly X or X11) is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for networked computers. It creates a hardware abstraction layer where software is written to use a generalized set of commands, allowing for device independence and reuse of programs on any computer that implements X.
Since Windows does not support X11 based windowing natively, it is necessary to run a special program called an 'X Server' that allows your Windows desktop to do so. The Computing and Networking Infrastructure (CNI) group currently recommends a free X server software,. Since X-windows does not provide secure connections itself, it is necessary to use it in conjunction with a separate tool that provides this security. We recoommend, which must be installed on your PC and configured correctly to provide secure X-Windows connections. PuTTY is the same tool used to provide all interactive login from Windows to Unix systems at the Lab. Thus, it should already be available on your system. PuTTY and Xming are designed to work together so that X applications you launch from within the PuTTY login windows will use the encrypted channel created by PuTTY to secure the network traffic used by the x server against sniffing.
Free X server for Windows with tabbed SSH terminal, telnet, RDP, VNC, Xdmcp, Mosh and X11-forwarding. Portable or installer version. Windows Services for Unix X-Windows Applications on Interix. (X11), consists of the X Server. It uses the X server on a Windows NT/2000 machine just like any. Free X server for Windows with tabbed SSH terminal, telnet, RDP, VNC, Xdmcp, Mosh and X11-forwarding. Portable or installer version.
NOTE: While it is possible to use X-windows without a secure product like PuTTY, this is no longer allowed at the JLab due to security concerns. Installing Xming Xming is free software that can be downloaded from XMing's website -. On their webiste, under Releases, Public Domain Releases, please install Xming, which would be the latest version.
If you will be doing anything specail with fonts, please install Xming-fonts from the same box. This additional installer provides standard core X fonts (which are usually required) and optional extended Bitstream Vera replacement fonts from Configuring PuTTY to Secure X-Windows PuTTY should be preconfigured to work in conjunction with Xming. The only configuration item is the flag that tells PuTTY to forward X connections. This is set in the PuTTY config panel under connection - ssh - tunnels. 'Enable X11 Forwarding' should be checked, and the X Display Location box should be set to 'localhost:0'. Starting an X Windows session with SSH X11 Tunneling All connections are initiated through PuTTy.
Xming will simply provide an X-server in much the same manner as a standard Unix workstation. PuTTy will forward your X information from each host when you establish a connection. Start the X Server on your PC - Xming, that is - either each time you reboot your PC or whenever you want to use X Windows:. Click the Start button. Select All Programs Xming Xming. Xming will appear in your system tray (lower right with clock) as a black X with an orange circle around the middle.
Start a PuTTy session with SSH tunneling enabled and login to your Unix account. Click the Start button. Select All Programs PuTTY PUTTY. Select an X11 enabled session and click 'Load'. Login Using this configuration, an X-Windows window will automatically open whenever you start an X-Windows program on the remote Unix host.
Testing Your Configuration A good X-Windows program to test with when you first set up Xming is xclock. At the command prompt, enter the following and a small window containing a clock will open on your PC's screen. (It might open minimized; if you don't see it right away, check your taskbar. Username@jlabl1 xclock & Troubleshooting I get the following display errors: 'Error: Can't open display:' 'Error: Couldn't find per display information' This usually means that your X server is not running or you have not enabled X11 forwarding for your PuTTy configuration. Please verify your PuTTy configuration is as outlined above, then, start Xming and restart your PuTTY connection. Hummingbird Exceed Users Historically, the CNI group supported Hummingbird Exceed as the X server software for Windows machines.
However, we no longer support this product. There are some Accelerator programs that will only work with Hummingbird Exceed.
The ACE group still provides support for Exceed. Please submit an for assistance and/or instructions for installing their copy of Hummingbird Exceed.
Xeyes displayed from a remote server via Xming on Windows, over ssh, with a PuTTY window in the background The Problem One of my most feared questions from end users is “how can I interact with an X11 GUI application on our remote Linux system if I have no access to the physical console, X11 isn’t installed, and there is no VNC access?” After hearing this many times at one site, I wrote a script to automate the server side process, but even that does not address the whole story. I’m writing this post as a quick reference when I field this question in the future, and I hope it helps you, too. The problem is that most system administrators do not install X11, Xorg, or other GUI interfaces on Linux and Unix systems as this introduces more packages to manage and patch, more security bugs to fix/mitigate, and a larger install footprint (more used space).
That last point may seem moot today, but with many environments deploying hundreds of virtual machines, 200-400MB of extra space per VM can really add up quickly (see my latest presentation on for more ideas on saving space in these environments). If you consider the overhead of installing a modern desktop/windowing system such as or, it could easily more than double the data size footprint of a Linux server. OK, many environments don’t install the Linux/Unix GUI bits (also known as X11 or Xorg server), so who cares, I can just install everything via the command line, right? Well, yes, for the most part you can just install applications via the command line and forget this whole issue.
However, there are a few vendor applications, notably including Oracle Database and Application Server products, that are difficult if not impossible to install without a GUI. The Solution The modern solution to the problem stated above is to tunnel X11 traffic over ssh (securely), and display it on your workstation, whether it be Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. For sake of helping the most folks, we’ll focus on Windows workstations here, but Linux and Mac OS X should work with only the server side changes we write here (just connect with the command line ssh -Y yourusername@yourservername.com). In certain circumstances, it may be advantageous to setup a VNC server to accomplish the same thing, but that requires more of X11 and an windowing environment be configured on the server side, and we’d like to avoid as many server side changes as possible, as many users won’t have access to make these changes themselves.
Process Overview In order to obtain the ability to interact with an X11 GUI remotely, we will follow these general steps:. Ensure that the foundational X11 packages are installed. Ensure that OpenSSH server is configured to forward X11 connections. Configure a local X11 server on our workstation. Configure our ssh application to forward X11 requests. Test with a simple application.
Configured authentication if user changes are needed. Move on with the task at hand. 1) Ensure that the foundational X11 packages are installed In order to use remote X11, you must have a few X11 packages installed on the server. In many cases these are already installed, but you may have to ask your System Administrator to install them for you, it’s easy: RHEL/CentOS/Fedora (xterm is optional, but beneficial for testing): sudo yum install xorg-x11-xauth xterm 2) Ensure that OpenSSH server is configured to forward X11 connections On RHEL and related RedHat based servers, the file to check is /etc/ssh/sshdconfig. Review this file for the following line: X11Forwarding yes If that line is preceded by a comment ( #) or is set to no, update the file to match the above, and restart your ssh server daemon (be careful here — if you made an error you may lock yourself out of the server). Sudo /etc/init.d/sshd restart 3) Configure a local X11 server on your workstation Next we need to install and configure a local X11 server, or are popular.
Click Xming to start the Xming X11 Server on your Desktop/Workstation free choices for Windows. Simply download and follow the install instructions for these packages, Xming is by far easier to setup for beginners. After the install is complete, and you’ve rebooted your workstation/desktop (if requested), start the X11 server application from the start menu.
4) Configure our ssh application to forward X11 requests Next, we need to ensure that our ssh client is configured to forward X11 requests from the server. If you are using Cygwin/X, a Mac, or a Linux desktop, simple open up a terminal and preface your ssh command with -Y, for example: ssh -Y yourusername@yourserver.yourdomain.com That will tell SSH to forward all X11 requests to your local desktop. For Windows, the most popular client is. To achieve the same result in PuTTY, load the profile of the server you wish to connect to, or simply fill out the connection details. Next expand the Connection and SSH options on the left hand side.
Under SSH and then X11, ensure that Enable X11 Forwarding is checked. PuTTY Configuration Window Show X11 Forwarding Enabled. Finally, click the Open button to connect to the remote server. 5) Test with a simple application If everything has gone according to plan you now have a server configured to allow X11 connections, an ssh client configured likewise, and you are ready to test. When connecting to the remote server (last step in part 4 above), you may see a message like this: /usr/bin/xauth: creating new authority file /home/ec2-user/.Xauthority This is a normal message, and in fact it tells us that part of our changes are working!
X11 Server Windows Ime
This file contains an authentication token required to connect with the X11 server. Now to test, it’s easy, just enter this command on the remote ssh session: xterm Wait just a few seconds depending on your internet/network connection speed, and you should see the following. Xterm displayed on Windows from a remote Linux Server If you see something similar, congratulations! Remote X11 connections are working! 6) Configured authentication if user changes are needed X11 forwarding is working, great!
These days, however, users are often not allowed to log in as root, which is great for security, but adds yet another step to our process. In step 5 we ran xterm as ourselves, which validates our setup is proper.
Try running the same command as another user, though, via sudo and you’ll likely see an error like the following. X11 Error from Improper Xauth Configuration The problem here is that a.Xauthority file is created automatically at log in time for our user, allowing our user access to our local X11 server (on our desktop).
However, when root tries to access this connection it is denied without the proper permissions. To work around this, simply copy the.Xauthority file from your user directory to the user you want to work with (root for example). Note that this should be done from your user account, not as root: sudo cp /.Xauthority root/ sudo /bin/chown root root/.Xauthority Try running xterm again as root, it should work. Sudo xterm 7) Move on with the task at hand There you have it, now that you can login remotely and still access a GUI as any user, you can move on to installing your GUI centric application such as Oracle. Sudo cp /.Xauthority oracle/ sudo /bin/chown oracle oracle/.Xauthority sudo su - oracle./runInstaller Enjoy! Gotchas When installing or configuring an application, like those from Oracle, keep in mind that a break in your internet connection or other problems with your link may cause the remote program to be closed! So while it may be tempting to let an X11 process run overnight, you may have better results sticking around until the process completes.
If your installer/application stops to ask you a question and your link does fail, you will likely lose all the work completed to that point and have to start all over again. Save early, save often, as they say.
Conclusion If this was helpful, please drop us a line at info at redwireservices.com, on Twitter, or using the page. If you have additional tips to add, please add a comment below and I will update the post accordingly to help as many as possible.
Finally, if you or your company are in need of, or, give us a ring at (206) 829-8621. Tony, It sounds like the Oracle installer you are using requires an additional package. I can’t say what that is, but a few ideas. 1) Run the installer from an XTerm window with verbose logging turned on if the installer supports it. Watch the output for a specific library that’s missing, then install that via yum. 2) Ask Oracle 3) If you don’t care about the long term management of the system; just install the full Gnome environmnet.
Cygwin X11 Server Windows
On CentOS6/RHEL6: yum -y groupinstall 'Desktop' 'Desktop Platform' 'X Window System' 'Fonts'. We truly appreciated Nick's professional and creative approach to our DRP from an Open Source back end.
You provide a valuable service in the Pacific NW. Thanks Nick!” — Kimberly Dodd, CPA, Broker “I can honestly say that you are the best hire I have ever made.” — Mark Young, Ph.D., Director, Network & Server Systems, University of Puget Sound ”Our project required a deep knowledge.It was immediately evident that you had the experience and skills to pull it off.” — Patrick Stroud, President, PLY Interactive, Inc.