Transfer display of active windows remotely

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Sat Oct 11 08:11:21 PDT 2008


On Saturday 11 October 2008, Magnus Kessler wrote:
>On Saturday 11 October 2008, Prasad H.L. wrote:
>> This is what I have in mind.
>>
>> - Consider display :0 on machine 1 (m1) and display :0 on machine 2 (m2).
>> - Let us say, a process 'p1' running under privileges of user 'u' opens a
>> window on :0 of m1. - I do an 'ssh -X u at m1' in xterm on :0 of m2 and
>> login to m1.
>> - Now, from that xterm window, is there any way by which I can make that
>> window of process 'p1' appear on :0 of m2.
>>
>> This kind of situation regularly occurs to me and some of my friends. We
>> have multiple terminals at our disposal. On one terminal, I start some
>> xterm which is, let us say, showing output of some process. I go to some
>> other department in the institute and do an ssh to that terminal. Now, I
>> have no way of seeing what is going on in that xterm. Well, this is a
>> simple example, of course.
>
>This particular use case, seeing the terminal output of a process on a
>different terminal, can be achieved quite easily using "screen" [0]. No
>support from X required at all.
>
>In a first terminal (or even on the console without any X) run screen. Then
>run any non-graphical process in the screen session. When you move to a
>different computer, log into the first one through ssh and grab the screen
>session (screen -dr). You will see the output of the still running process
>there.

Ahh, but what if the app is a heavy graphics app, say for instance a running 
session of emc?

>> Another example (though childish). Consider a case where I have a browser
>> window with many tabs open in it, the window being displayed on :0 of m1.
>> I would like to export it to :0 of m2 when I go and sit in front of m2.
>> Before closing ssh on m2, I re-export the window back to :0 of m1 and
>> then quit the ssh. Such a feature would be really great to have. Since,
>> any way, currently the only dependency on the remote machine is that it
>> should have an X server running, I believe this feature should be
>> implementable if not already present.
>
>Have you looked into NX [1]? NX can be considered the "screen" for running X
>sessions. I usually run an NX session on one machine (in the background,
>without any access to the graphics hardware), then connect to it using the
>nxclient software from either machine on the network. I can disconnect from
>a running session and pick it up later from somewhere else.
>
>> With Regards,
>> Prasad H. L.
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Magnus Kessler
>
>[0] http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
>[1] http://www.nomachine.com/



-- 
Cheers, Gene
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