I have a machine running Ubuntu which I SSH to from my Fedora 14 machine. I want to forward X from the Ubuntu machine back to Fedora so I can run graphical programs remotely. Both machines are on a LAN.
I know that the -X option enables X11 forwarding in SSH, but I feel like I am missing some of the steps.
What are the required steps to forward X from a Ubuntu machine to Fedora over SSH?
X11 forwarding needs to be enabled on both the client side and the server side.
On the client side, the -X (capital X) option to ssh enables X11 forwarding, and you can make this the default (for all connections or for a specific connection) with ForwardX11 yes in ~/.ssh/config.
On the server side, X11Forwarding yes must be specified in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Note that the default is no forwarding (some distributions turn it on in their default /etc/ssh/sshd_config), and that the user cannot override this setting.
The xauth program must be installed on the server side. If there are any X11 programs there, it’s very likely that xauth will be there. In the unlikely case xauth was installed in a nonstandard location, it can be called through ~/.ssh/rc (on the server!).
Note that you do not need to set any environment variables on the server. DISPLAY and XAUTHORITY will automatically be set to their proper values. If you run ssh and DISPLAY is not set, it means ssh is not forwarding the X11 connection.
To confirm that ssh is forwarding X11, check for a line containing Requesting X11 forwarding in the output of ssh -v -X. Note that the server won’t reply either way, a security precaution of hiding details from potential attackers.