On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 09:24:33AM -0400, Mike Hoye wrote: > > Back in the bad old days, it was pretty straightforward to set up xdm to > log yourself into a variety of different machines - you could sit down > at your machine, fire it up and you'd have a full-on remote session on > another system, running remotely. On the remote machine configure xdm/kdm/gdm to listen for xdmcp. By default most linux distros disable xdmcp. If you look in the kdm/gdm conf files you will probably see xdmcp options commented out. Otherwise setup xdm. Man xdm for details. Xdm will start gnome or kde. If not, man xsession and see .xsession. To login to a remote machine with X you need to start an X server with the command: $ X -query <remote-machine> There is no need to muck around with xhost. X should use xauth. If you want an encrypted session use stunnel. On the workstation setup stunnel to listen on localhost:117 (xdmcp) and forward to <remotehost>:3117. On the remotehost listen on 3117 and forward to localhost:117. Then start the X server with $ X -query localhost As stunnel can be a pain to setup you could also use ssh to tunnel with: $ ssh -L 117:localhost:117 <remotehost> You might also be able to start X with something like: $ startx ssh <remotehost> gnome-session|kde-session|xterm To start X you may need additional arguments such as "vt8" but I think that it should just work. Some vid cards may not support multiple X servers. If yours is one then use Xnest. If you want a persistent desktop then look at freeNX or VNC as per the earlier post. xApart from useing xdm and X -query I have not tested any of this. Have fun. -- sg