Connect to your Linux computer remotely without needing to take the less secure VNC route yet, still having a GUI to work with. This quick and painless tutorial will show how to forward your GNOME session from your Linux box to another computer, via SSH and X11 Forwarding. I have found out along the way that X11 forwarding seems quicker then a traditional VNC connection and has better integration. Better security and (what seems like) quicker response times are just one of the benefits of using SSH. You will of course need a OS that has X11 and GNOME installed for this experiment. This tutorial can also be applied towards other desktop environments as-well such as KDE if you wish and for individual applications.
Requirements
- Two computers
- One Computer running X11
- One Computer running X11 and GNOME
- Static IPs set
- General knowledge of Linux
- About 20-30min Free time
Step One
Set-up SSH on the Linux server, on Ubuntu Linux type sudo apt-get install SSH in the terminal and press enter. Type your admin password in and SSH should now be successfully installed.
Step Two
X11 forwarding is turned off by default when SSH is installed on your Linux server, it is now your task to turn it on. Type gedit /etc/ssh/ssh_config into terminal and press enter. Add
ForwardAgent yes
ForwardX11 yes
ForwardX11Trusted yes
to the file ssh_config and save it using the same name, to your servers desktop. Then type sudo mv ~/Desktop/ssh_config /etc/ssh/ssh_config into terminal.
Repeat Step Two for the sshd_config file type gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config into the Linux terminal and press enter. Add
X11Forwarding yes
to the file sshd_config and save it using the same name, to your servers desktop. Then type sudo mv ~/Desktop/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config into terminal.
Step Three
Now from Mac OS X (any OS with x11 installed) type ssh -X username@server.ip.address into the X11 terminal (xterm) located inside the Utilities folder on Mac OS X. You will then be connected via SSH to the server.
Step Four
After your connected to the server via SSH type gnome-session into the xterm terminal. It may take a second but you should see the start-up sequence for GNOME. Enjoy!
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