X Power Tools

Chapter 13. Remote Access

Network Transparency

The manpage for X calls it a portable, network-transparent window system. The phrase network-transparent refers to the location-independence of the clients and server—the client may be on the same machine as the server or on machines spread all over the planet, as long as he has a network connection to the server.

In this chapter, we’ll examine how to use remote clients and entire sessions, and the security and performance implications involved in remote access.

Remote access always involves two or more hosts, and when discussing this topic, it can be easy to confuse which machine is which. Throughout this chapter, I’ve adopted the convention of calling the computer on which the X server is running blue, and the computer on which the remote client is running red. The machine name is embedded into the shell prompt in the examples: blue$ is the shell prompt for the X server machine, and red$ is the shell prompt for the client machine.

Tip

As virtualization and partitioning technologies such as Xen, Solaris compartments, and VMware grow into widespread use, X’s network transparency gains new value. The ability to display windows from different machine partitions side-by-side on one display provides an important productivity boost for system administrators.

Displaying on a Remote Server

Causing an X client to display on a remote server is fairly straightforward: simply use the displayspec (Sections 1.12 and 7.1) to point to the desired server ...