Comments on: Setting up a secure remote X session with gdm

By: dasher

dasher — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:23:16 +0000

Some handy tips :)

If you want to have a remote connection without it taking over your existing desktop – “x-session-manager” in ssh-session with “/usr/bin/gdmflexiserver –xnest” and you’ll have a window that contains the desktop of the remote machine.

By: Javor

Javor — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:55:18 +0000

I’m trying to do that in order to access my desktop from internet. But this includes traversing a firewall.

Has anyone tried that?
And has anyone experience on how fast is it running X over internet?

When I have managed how to do it I will publish it here :)

Thanks

By: doez

doez — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 05:59:17 +0000

thank’s

By: John Curtis

John Curtis — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:33:46 +0000

Sorry, ignore fedora 8. I used Fedora 7.

By: John Curtis

John Curtis — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:07:58 +0000

A success for my Fedora 8, Gnome. I tried KDE too, which used ksmserver.

I don’t explicitly use ssh-askpass in my script, but fedora 8 somehow gives me the dialog for ssh passphrase out of the ssh command! Strange, but works. Maybe this is the magic of the -n option ? I am going back to my studying of MCSE, which is the whole reason I am looking at these issues. By the way, I learned how to setup ssh public key authentication.

My 2 files follow,

[john@demo1 ~]$ cat /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions/gdm-ssh-session
#!/bin/bash
TARGETHOST=`zenity –title “Host to connect to” –entry –text “Enter the name of the host you want to log in to”`
/usr/bin/ssh -A -X -T -n “$TARGETHOST” /usr/bin/gnome-session
[john@demo1 ~]$ cat /usr/share/xsessions/gdm-ssh.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=GDM-SSH
Comment=This session logs you into GDM-SSH
Exec=/etc/X11/gdm/Sessions/gdm-ssh-session
TryExec=gnome-session
Icon=
Type=Application
[john@demo1 ~]$

By: John

John — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:37:48 +0000

How does this work on Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”.. ? 10.4 this worked excellent, but it seems apple has broken the fullscreen X support :(

By: Wahoo

Wahoo — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:04:20 +0000

Thank you for sharing!

By: James Ponza

James Ponza — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:20:30 +0000

Oh and if you had problems finding your sessions directory then you might also like to know that your ssh-askpass is located in:

/usr/libexec/openssh/ssh-askpass

in RHEL4 :)

This is such a useful page and such a simple technique that maybe we should cook up one script each for the default RHEL4/5, debian and ubuntu… then everyone can share the love ;)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:12:48 +0000

And for Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 you’d create:
/usr/share/xsessions/ssh-session
and
/etc/X11/gdm/Sessions/ssh-session

I just tried this – I can’t believe it – it’s so amazing, just like sitting in front of the computer!! (I’m on a gigabit network, but still – I’ve always found VNC to totally get in the way of it feeling like you’re really on the computer – but this is amazing – so I’ve just set it up as a session on our SunRay2 Server – now I can use my desktop that’s in a completely different room from the tiny noiseless SunRay thin client :)

By: James Ponza

James Ponza — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:35:10 +0000

In Ubuntu (I’m using 7.04), we put ssh.desktop in the following location:
/usr/share/xsessions

thanks for the howto!

By: Jagdish

Jagdish — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:23:25 +0000

I am using RHEL 4. in which the path /etc/dm/Sessions does not exist. I don’t have any idea abt. the debian. So kindly help me how can i do this.

By: Piotr Sniady

Piotr Sniady — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:01:34 +0000

Three small remarks:

1. Don’t forget to make the file /usr/local/bin/ssh-session executable ( chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/ssh-session )

2. Maybe it is a typo: in my distribution (Ubuntu) “/etc/alternative/ssh-askpass” should be replaced by “/etc/alternatives/ssh-askpass”

3. Great help, congratulations. Do you know how to make the same work for a remote KDE session?

By: dom

dom — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:05:03 +0000

I’ve added a bug to mention this to GDM Bugzilla:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322155

If they get interested, good; in the worse case, it may help other people finding this solution…

By: Danigo Ludovic

Danigo Ludovic — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 17:54:53 +0000

Nice solution. Migth even be worth proposing for inclusion in gdm with some polish.
Go ahead ! ;)