In order to obtain the ability to interact with an X11 GUI remotely, we will follow these general steps:
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For sake of helping the most folks, we’ll focus on Windows workstations here, but Linux and Mac OS X should work with only the server side changes we write here (just connect with the command line ssh -Y certain circumstances, it may be advantageous to setup a VNC server to accomplish the same thing, but that requires more of X11 and an windowing environment be configured on the server side, and we’d like to avoid as many server side changes as possible, as many users won’t have access to make these changes themselves. The modern solution to the problem stated above is to tunnel X11 traffic over ssh (securely), and display it on your workstation, whether it be Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.
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However, there are a few vendor applications, notably including Oracle Database and Application Server products, that are difficult if not impossible to install without a GUI.
OK, many environments don’t install the Linux/Unix GUI bits (also known as X11 or Xorg server), so who cares, I can just install everything via the command line, right? Well, yes, for the most part you can just install applications via the command line and forget this whole issue.
If you consider the overhead of installing a modern desktop/windowing system such as Gnome or KDE, it could easily more than double the data size footprint of a Linux server. That last point may seem moot today, but with many environments deploying hundreds of virtual machines, 200-400MB of extra space per VM can really add up quickly (see my latest presentation on Open Source Data Deduplication for more ideas on saving space in these environments). The problem is that most system administrators do not install X11, Xorg, or other GUI interfaces on Linux and Unix systems as this introduces more packages to manage and patch, more security bugs to fix/mitigate, and a larger install footprint (more used space). I’m writing this post as a quick reference when I field this question in the future, and I hope it helps you, too. One of my most feared questions from end users is “how can I interact with an X11 GUI application on our remote Linux system if I have no access to the physical console, X11 isn’t installed, and there is no VNC access?” After hearing this many times at one site, I wrote a script to automate the server side process, but even that does not address the whole story. Xeyes displayed from a remote server via Xming on Windows, over ssh, with a PuTTY window in the background
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