Connecting to Other X Window Systems
You can connect from Mac OS X to other X
Window systems using
ssh with
X11
forwarding.
If you use OpenSSH (which is included with Mac OS X), you must use
the -X
option to request X11 forwarding (the
-2
option specifies the SSH Version 2 protocol,
as opposed to the older Version 1 protocol). For example:
$ ssh -2 -X remotemachine
-l username
As long as X11 is running, this can be entered in either an
xterm
window or in the Terminal. To have the X11
forwarding enabled in Terminal, you must have the
DISPLAY
variable
set prior to making the connection. Under the
bash
shell (and other Bourne-compatible
shells) use:
DISPLAY=:0.0; export DISPLAY
Under csh
and tcsh
,
use:
setenv DISPLAY :0.0
It is also possible to create a double-clickable application that connects to a remote machine via SSH 2, with X11 forwarding enabled. For example, you can use the following script for this purpose:
#!/bin/sh DISPLAY=:0.0; export DISPLAY /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm -e ssh -2 -Xremotemachine
-lusername
If you’ve installed the commercial version of SSH from http://www.ssh.com, the equivalent of the preceding script is as follows:
#!/bin/sh DISPLAY=:0.0; export DISPLAY /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm -e ssh2remotemachine
-lusername
Tip
The X11 forwarding flag is +x with the commercial SSH, but it is enabled by default, so that you need not include it in the command.
Using Apple’s X11, you can add an Application menu item to accomplish the same task. To do this, start by saving the above ...
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