How to handle X11 Forwarding using SSH

Published January 01, 2008

If you need to use X applications/GUI over a remote SSH connection via PuTTY, this tutorial is for you.

What you need

  • Xming : an X-Server that starts on top of your desktop. Download Xming and install it.
  • PuTTY : an SSH client. Download PuTTY (if using Windows) and save it on your hard disk.

Configure Xming

  • Click on the Start button in Windows XP, select Xming → XLaunch
  • At the Display settings dialog box, select Multiple windows and set the Display number as 0. Click on Next.
  • Keep clicking on Next button till you reach the Finish configuration page, then click on the Finish button.

Configure PuTTY

  • Start PuTTY.
  • In the PuTTY Configuration section, on the left panel, select Connection → SSH → X11
  • On the right panel, click on the Enable X11 forwarding checkbox
  • Set the X display location as :0.0
  • Click on Session option on the left panel.
  • Enter the hostname or IP address in the Host Name textbox
  • Save the session.

Running the X applications from PuTTY

  • Double-click on your PuTTY session and login. After you login, a file named .Xauthority will be created.
  • Check if the DISPLAY variable has been set.

    echo $DISPLAY

You should see a meaningful value for $DISPLAY

  • Start any X application, say xterm.

    xterm

The xterm window should open successfully.

Running X apps as root

This requires a little tweak. Suppose your regular user home directory is /var/home/arul and the root user home directory is /root

  • If you were able to login as a normal user earlier, a file called .Xauthority would be created in the home directory. Chmod the .Xauthority to 555.

    chmod 555 ~/.Xauthority

  • Login as root from your regular user account.

    su - root

  • Copy the .Xauthority from the regular user's home directory to root user's home directory.

    cp /var/home/arul/.Xauthority /root

  • Now try to open any X apps like xterm or emacs. It should work.

Troubleshooting

If you're not able to open any X apps from the session, you may need to enable X11 SSH Forwarding in the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file.

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Last Updated: January 01, 2008.     This post was originally written on January 02, 2008.