UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a pretty basic XWindows question. I'm using Linux and the BASH shell. I want to connect to a machine that is running a Java IDE (we currently have I think "SlickEdit" but we're probably going to download Netbeans, Eclipse) and view the IDE on the client machine. I tried "xhost +" on the client machine and then telnetted to the server and did:

set DISPLAY="myMachine"

When I tried to run the IDE though it didn't display on the client machine. I guess I have a couple of questions:

1) Can you run *any* app and reset the display to a different machine or does it have to be a special "XWindows enabled" app to do so?

2) I've seen in the past where you're supposed to do:

set DISPLAY="myMachine:0"

What in the world is the colon zero for?

Thanks and sorry for the basic-ness of my questions.

See the man page for X. Every X server has a display name of the form: hostname:displaynumber.screennumber
This information is used by the application to determine how it should connect ot the server and which screen it should use by default (on displays with multiple monitors).

Maybe someone else has the answer to your first question.

on reliant unix this is whta i do:

on Client [ xhost + ]
on Server [ export DISPLAY=<client_machine_name>:0.0

and i am able to open on client any application window i have on the server.

An easy solution may be to use ssh to connect to the box where the app is and use X11 tunneling so that you don't have to set any DISPLAY yourself. It's done automatically. I use putty as my ssh client and check off X11 tunneling enabled.

I appreciate all the responses so far but does anyone know about the other part of my question? Does an application somehow need to be "XWindows enabled" (or whatever the terminology is) in order for me to display the output remotely?

I'll give it a try but I'm not 100% sure.

My understanding is that any application that uses X has to use a certain display specified by host:display.screen. If you run it on your own machine is just uses the local host with display 0 and screen 0. But if you set your display variable to something else it will display there instead.

If that understanding is true, any app you can get to display on your local Xwindows box can also be sent to a remote box by setting the display variable appropriately. There is no special "Xwindows remote enabled" that it has to have to be able to use it remotely.