[RndTbl] X remote login

[Gilbert E. Detillieux]

According to Sean A. Walberg:
> On Wed, 2002-04-17 at 16:07, Ihor Jakowec wrote:
> > I would like to login to  the University of Winnipeg's
> > mainframe, with an X window interface, from my personal
> > computer at home.  Up to now I have just been logging in
> > with telnet ( in text mode).
> 
> 2 ways come to mind
> - SSH in from your machine to the UofWs.  X-tunneling (if they've
> allowed it) will let you run X clients on their machines, but be
> displayed on yours.

That's probably the best way to do it, particularly if you're only
interested in running a few individual X applications, launched from the
command line, as opposed to getting the whole X login environment of the
remote host.

It also has the advantage of being more secure.

> - Telnet in.  Set $DISPLAY to your ip:0.0 and then run an X client, ie
> 
> mybox$ telnet uofw
> blah
> blah
> uofw$ export DISPLAY=my.ip.address:0.0
> uofw$ xterm &

That's another option, of course, but a bit more tedious and error-prone.
You'd also have to give your X server permission to accept connections from
the remote host system, since the X clients on that host will be trying to
connect back to your server directly.  (The beauty of the X-tunneling option
in SSH is that's all taken care of, and each end thinks it's dealing with
local client/server connections.)

> Or are you looking for an XDMCP login?

I think that's what he had in mind, as that's what had been discussed during
the round-table discussion at the last MUUG meeting.  I know that works at
the U of M, but the U of W may not allow XDMCP-managed connections from
remote addresses.  (Perhaps it's not allowed for the same security reasons a
lot of campuses are no longer allowing telnet, ftp, and other protocols that
exchange passwords as clear text.)

It's also possible the U of W allows it, but we don't know what host should
be queried for XDMCP support.  Anyone from the U of W listening, who may
know the answer?

-- 
Gilbert E. Detillieux		E-mail:	<gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Computer Science	Web:	http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/
University of Manitoba		Phone:	(204)474-8161
Winnipeg, MB, CANADA  R3T 2N2	Fax:	(204)474-7609