Definitely hcw … not the first time I’ve had something really annoying just ‘sort itself out’ and I seriously doubt it’ll be the last 
darnche mate it’s not all that difficult to do, I use nx a lot myself but you don’t always need to fire up a full desktop just to run one or two small programs
It’s often a lot simpler to create/edit config files on your server for example using something like kate (or kwrite) then using vi in a console … and you don’t need a full desktop to do it
Vi is great but it’s never gonna let you have all the files relating to say your http/php/mysql/webmail configs etc open on nice little tabs that you can click on with use of a mouse for ease of switching back’n forth
The setup is quite simple really, in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file look for this parameter:
X11Forwarding
It will either look like:
X11Forwarding yes
or
#X11Forwarding yes
X11Forwarding no
#X11Forwarding no
Or it may just not be there … You need the first one, X11Forwarding yes
Add it or change it to suit, save the file and restart ssh (/etc/init.d/sshd restart as root)
Provided you already have a functioning sshd that you can successfully log into you now have x11 forwarding over ssh working on your server
(even handy for desktops if you’re like me and have them all over the place)
To login from a shell and have the capability to run x apps, instead of using just ssh -l user host You add -X as the first paramter, i.e.
ssh -X -l user host
Once you are logged in then you can run kwrite from the server on your desktop by typing kwrite in the shell
I always add a & after the command myself (like kwrite &) because this allows you to run other apps from the same shell without closing the first one you ran
(this would also close your app) or opening another shell, you usually have to press Ctrl + C to get back to the prompt to run another app when you’ve use the & suffix
To use it from a windows machine you need an x server emulator program, I’ve always found xming (available from sourceforge.net) to be excellent, comes with all required libraries etc built in and has an option to use putty with it on install
Putty is a great shell client for windows and if you enable this option on installing xming it has it’s own putty ‘fork’ bundled in that works brillianty alongside the xming interface(s),
and configuration is simpler than downloading a stand-alone copy of putty and various other x emulators
So, once you have that installed and running, use it’s Xlaunch tool, fill in the server and user info, connect, and type in the command to run whatever program you use
kmail is one I use a lot, I could be working on any of 4 machines when I wish to check mail, kmail is configured in my user profile on the server and I use either nx or x11 forwarding
whichever’s most convenient at the time, to manage mails from either any local machine, or even a remote machine when necessary
Why fire up a complete nx desktop to look at mails you’ve already downloaded onto your machine when you’re in another part of the building or off-site
Nx is awesome, but for me x11 forwarding for me is still extremely handy (The issue had only cropped because I had some drives etc to change and decided it was a good time to upgrade from suse 11 to 11.2)
There are other ways to do ssh in from windows and have x11 capabilities, most results on google you’ll find use putty, so if you wanna check some other options out googling x11 forwarding using putty will return pretty specific results
I’ve tried no end of them over the past few years and I always keep going back to xming, nothing I’ve come across does it better or easier, so I guess that’s the one I’d recommend if you wanna acces your x apps from windows
And the last thing I expect to end up doing when I started the thread was to end up typing all that out!
But hey we’re all here to help each other and I hope it helps ya learn something new to you and that you find it useful
