Using Puppy Xserver with remote X apps

[John Swenson]

I have a headless ARM computer (running fedora F19) and a desktop running precise puppy and would occasionally like to run an X based configuration utility on the headless server and display on the puppy machine. I have tried running xhost + on the puppy machine and setting the DISPLAY variable on the headless machine to point to the puppy machine, but the app on the headless machine always says it cannot open the display.

Both machines are on the same LAN, same subnet (even same switch). I have tried setting the DISPLAY variable to both the name of the puppy machine and its IP address. (puppypcxxx:0 or 192.168.1.xxx:0) I get the same results out of both.

Neither machine has a firewall setup, they can ping each other. At this point I'm not sure if it something on the puppy machine or the fedora machine that is the problem.

Is the puppy Xserver capable of receiving network connections, and if yes how do I enable them?

All the Xorg documentation I can find seems to indicate that this should work, but it doesn't seem to.

I'm running precise puppy 5.7.1

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks,
John S.

[npierce]

Make a backup of /usr/bin/xwin, then look for a line like this in the original:

Code: Select all

   /usr/bin/xinit /root/.xinitrc -- -br -nolisten tcp > /tmp/xerrs.log 2>&1

Change it to this:

Code: Select all

   /usr/bin/xinit /root/.xinitrc -- -br > /tmp/xerrs.log 2>&1

Restart the X server.

The -nolisten tcp prevents X from accepting connections via TCP.

[John Swenson]

Thanks,
that works perfectly.

I can now SSH into the headless server, start an X app and it pops up a window on the puppy desktop.

John S.

[npierce]

You're welcome.

I usually have multiple computers running, but like to simply run everything from my Puppy laptop, so the ability of the X server to accept connections from the other machines is indispensable.

Although that ability is not needed by everyone, I think it is one of the most under-appreciated attributes of X. Since Windows didn't have that ability, many (perhaps most) former Windows users are probably not even aware that X can do this. Although I don't know much about the so-called "X replacements" being developed, I am guessing that this feature is something that will be left behind. I hope I am wrong. But if not wrong, I hope that many years go by before the day comes that some distros start dropping support for X.