Executing X-Windows Applications On A Remote Host

X-windows provides the ability to execute a program on one computer, such as Eskimo North's shell server, but display and get keyboard and mouse input from another, such as your home computer or work station.

If you are running X-windows on a machine at home, you can run a graphical application on our server and display it remotely and type into it as if it were on your machine. Most Linux or Unix-like systems include an X-Windows package with the operating system distribution.

If you are running Microsoft Windows, you will need an X-server such as Cygwin/X installed on your machine.

It is possible even to run a desktop window manager on Eskimo North's shell server and control it from your machine. That is, it will take mouse and keyboard input from your computer and display to your computer. You will need appropriate start-up scripts and configuration files for window manager of your choice.

To allow this you have to do two things.

1. On your machine allow our machine to access your display.

   xhost + eskimo.com

   Adjust the above to the appropriate command to allow Eskimo North's shell server to display on your X-server if you are using Microsoft Windows with an add-on X-server package such as Cygwin/X.
   
   
2. On our end you need to indicate where to display by setting the environment variable DISPLAY and exporting it.

   export DISPLAY="myhost.mydomain.com:0.0"

   ... where myhost.mydomain.com is the name of your machine.

The above example is for ksh, if you use tcsh or bash, use the appropriate commands to set and export the DISPLAY variable for those shells.

If you use ssh, and x-forwarding is enabled, then only step 1 is necessary, on this end you can leave the display set to ":0.0" and ssh will take care of it.