UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Not sure if that's the best thread title... anyway, working remotely on a HP-UX machine I often need a GUI window when executing remote software installs, and for this I use Cygwin/X on my Windows laptop which works perfectly. Connect via telnet, set DISPLAY, run installer, GUI appears locally - simple.

I want to do exactly the same when connecting to the HP box from a Linux laptop (Ubuntu 7.10) but I can never get past "unable to open display" errors. I've tried "xhost +" on the client before connecting, I've tried connecting with ssh -X (this also works via Cygwin) with no success. Is there anything else I need to do, or can try, to get this working?

I've had a search round the forums but not turned up anything that's got me any further, so I wonder what I'm missing?

It should work...

Just to double check the obvious:
you have the correct IP/hostname for the DISPLAY?

When you xhost + on the "client machine" that is your Ubuntu machine? Also you ran that command as the same user that is running the X display? It might have to be run as root, even.

Are you running any firewall on Ubuntu?

Just a few things to check.

jv

when executing remote software installs why not use the curses based swinstall command?

DISPLAY is set in the profile on login, there's probably a better way but it always seems to be right:

TTY=`who am i | awk '{print $2}'`
IP=`who -a |grep $TTY | awk '{print $8}'`
export DISPLAY=$IP:0.0

xhost + is being run on the linux laptop, I've tried it both as my user and setting it via sudo. I'm not running a specific firewall, but isn't linux secure in this sort of manner by default? Still, as I understand it the xhost + should be all that's needed.

... and I've not been using swinstall because they're not all package based installs, the majority are third party installs using a java GUI.