On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Mike Hoye wrote: > No offence meant but you'll need to spell that out a little bit more > clearly for it to be helpful to me, because: > > - The phrase "An X server with nothing on it" means nothing to me. > Does that mean that the tower in my basement does something involving > XDMCP? Or does it mean something else? You're on the right track. As with anything Unix related there are a number of approaches that can be taken. The easiest (at least initially) is to use a direct query. On the server in the basement (which I'm going to call banana) locate the Xaccess file for your display manager (xdm or kdm - gdm does things differently). Uncomment the line that has the comment "any host can get a login window". Access to port tcp/6000 is still required so as long as outsiders can't get into your internal network this is ok to do. Restart your display manager to update the settings. On the box on your desk (which I'm going to call orange), execute this command: X -query banana If everything is configured correctly you will be offered a login to banana. Local accounts on orange are not required. Orange need not even run Linux, it is just a vehicle for access to banana. > - How do I get a modern window manager to acknowledge that I want > to speak to something remote? As I understand it, "xhost +whatever" > _permits_ my laptop to talk X to my desktop, but doesn't actually make > it happen. What does? Ideally, here, this would be part of the pull-down If you mean an X app from a 3rd box (which I'll call kiwifruit) then you can set the DISPLAY environment variable, but it is generally more desirable to use X11 forwarding over ssh. > > The tricky part, and the part I'm assuming people are trying to figure > > out here, is how to disconnect the session and reattach it later. I've > > never tried that. > > That'd be gravy if I could make it work, but that's not the meat of what > I'm after. This can be done with xmove. Rob -- Robert Brockway B.Sc. Phone: +1-416-669-3073 Senior Technical Consultant Email: support [ at ] opentrend [ dot ] net OpenTrend Solutions Ltd. Web: www.opentrend.net We are open 24x7x365 for technical support. Call us in a crisis.