undertakingyou

Like most of us I have certain things on my home machine that I don’t have on the laptop, maybe a file, or I just like to manage things remotely so I can stay logged into chat. SSH with a Screen session has been awesome, and something that I have really liked. But, sometimes, editing a spreadsheet for example, it is really nice to just have a gui and use OOo.

Now I have used Vino (or VNC), and NX Machine, but those are insecure and have some slowdown to them. So, my brother-in-law sent me the following link: http://infectedproject.com/2007/07/09/forwarding-gnome-via-ssh/

It took me 4 minutes to set up because I already had SSH installed. I had to modify 6 characters and I was done! It only uses the SSH port and the standard X11 port (port 6000) to work. (That is one issue I had with NX Machine is it uses ports in the 1000 range to transfer session information in addition to ports 22 and 6000. )

So after the short modifications and a restart of the ssh deamon I ssh’d into my home machine with the laptop and then typed ‘gnome-session’ and away that we ran! It was quick, and didn’t pop up another window, was just exactly like I was at my desktop. Now, There are some draw backs that I haven’t overcome, and some things I haven’t tested. The sound is not brought to the remote machine. Also, it starts a new session. I have not figured out yet how to attach to a current running session, but I am sure that it would use the –choose-session parameter somehow. If anyone has anymore info there please feel free to leave a comment.

I decided to change the blog a little bit. I felt that the scope of the blog was too narrow, and I wasn’t really taking time with some of the subject matter (FreeBSD, I’m sorry). So, because I am always trying out new programs that I hear about I thought that I would share my experience on those also.

So todays subject: screen. This has got to be one of the coolest programs that I have run across in the open source world. Most will know what screens is, so I won’t take the time to go through it entirely. Just the brief: you can have multiple command lines each on their own “window”; or you can split that window into various “regions” to have a very interactive shell. So what you say, you can do that now with tabs. Here is the supper thing. You can then detach this screen session and re-attach it to a different machine. It is like you never left. You can also use it to have two computers hooked to the same shell. Great for tutorials and stuff. Also, ever run a server were you want a gui just for xterm so you can have the tabs. This is the way to go!

Now another cool thing, it is probably already installed on your system. It came by default on my ubuntu, Fedora 7, and openSUSE 10.3 machines.

For practical uses I have been playing around with irssi and centericq (thoughts pending on those) and while at work I ssh into my home box and us my chat/irc clients, run updates, download what I need, etc. Then at the end of the work day, I can disconnect the screen session, come home, reattach it on my home computer, and not miss a thing. Everything still running, downloads still going, nothing missed. Very cool.

In short, screen is awesome! To learn more use “man screen”