Starting GUI (KDE) via SSH

[Jeremy C. Reed]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, George Gambill wrote:

> The other day I used SSH to log into a remote (local on the lan) computer as
> user (not root) and wound up at the command line.  This box normally boots
> to the KDE login screen and was setting there waiting for a login.
>
> I wanted to make changes to the properties of an Icon on user's desktop.  I
> issued "startx" and it failed.  I think Linux only likes one GUI (KDE)
> running at a time.  If true, the failure makes sense.
>
> Is there a way around this.

KDE runs under X. X is two parts: the X server which runs on the system
with the physical display, keyboard and mouse; the X clients are the X
applications that can run anywhere, but are interactively used on the
system running the X server.

Yes, you can run startx and open another X display; like "startx -- :1".
But that will run on the remote system and probably won't be any good for
you to look at and use.

It doesn't make sense to login remotely and run a startx (except in some
rare situations).

You can use ssh to login and create a secure channel for running X clients
on that remote box which will be displayed on your own local X server.
KDE is a huge collection of tools; you can run many parts of KDE remotely.

I have never done it, but I assume you can run the kwin (or KDE's window
manager) on the remote system since it is an X client and use it on your
local X server. But, generally, the window manager X client is ran on the
same system that is running the X server (i.e. the local system).

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/