Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Linux Tips - 4

This is not a big secret. But just thought of putting it here.

If you work on a server by remotely logging into it and wonder how you can open softwares like matlab, openoffice on the remote server with the GUI window appearing on your screen, this is what you need to do.

Login with ssh with the -X flag

# ssh -X abc@bcd

where abc is your login name and bcd is your server name

The flag -X enables the X11 forwarding. Now any graphical program that you run on the server will appear on your screen. Note that you have to have high speed network connection for this to work smoothly.

Now run the program

# ooffice &

ampersand (&) runs it in the background.

A window will appear on your screen that actually belongs to the program running on the remote server.

The use of flag -X invloves some security issues. You can use -Y flag to enable trusted X11 forwarding.