Can't open display on remote system

graemeg

graemeg

Hi,

I have my workstation running FreeBSD since 9.x and upgraded it over the years to 10.1. It works well. I just installed FreeBSD 10.2 on an old laptop. On the laptop I can do export DISPLAY=192.168.0.2:0; xcalc and XCalc will appear on my workstation screen. But I can't do the reverse. Any ideas why?

Code: 
[~]$ export DISPLAY=192.168.0.31:0
[~]$ xcalc
Error: Can't open display: 192.168.0.31:0

I ran xhost + on my laptop, and it said "access control disabled", but it makes no difference. The workstation still can't open the laptop display.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,
G.
 
The laptop would have to have Xorg listening on a network port. This isn't by default. You probably modified this on your workstation a long time ago and forgot about it.
 
Thanks SirDice - I believe you are correct. Using netstat -naf inet | grep 6000 on both systems, I can see my workstation listens on port 6000, but the laptop doesn't.

You wouldn't happen to know what I need to change in FreeBSD on the laptop to enable Xorg listening on a netwok port too? I did some internet searching and only get loads of Linux references, and the settings files don't match up with FreeBSD.
 
On my workstation and laptop, my systems boot to the console login screen. I then log in with my user and run startx -- -dpi 96.

Using the command above, my workstation listens to port 6000 without me specifying the -listen tcp parameter. So where does it get it's TCP listening setting from? Either way, I'll try the -listen parameter on my laptop and see if netstat reports port 6000. [few seconds later] Nope, just started my X11 on my laptop using -listen_tcp and also tried -listen tcp, netstat still reports nothing is listen on port 6000 and I could get xcalc to display from my workstation onto my laptop.

What I'm trying to achieve is use my laptop as a second screen for my workstation, using Xdmx (x11-servers/xorg-dmx)... as described in this IBM article.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-mltihed/index.html

I can get Xdmx to work using a slightly different method... SSH with X11 forwarding enabled, but that is more effort than the IBM article.
 
hukadan : Here is a snippet from the Xorg log stating the version on my workstation.

Code: 
X.Org X Server 1.14.7
Release Date: 2014-06-05
[257790.744] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
[257790.744] Build Operating System: FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE-p9 amd64
[257790.744] Current Operating System: FreeBSD graeme-desktop 10.1-RELEASE-p26 FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p26 #0: Wed Jan 13 20:59:29 UTC 2016  root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
[257790.745] Build Date: 21 January 2015  05:52:30AM

The laptop shows Xorg v1.17.4
 
Juha Nurmela said:
startx -- -dpi 96 -listen tcp ought to do it, and you should be able to see it in ps axww | grep X. Clear any stale /tmp/.X0-lock in case it picked up $DISPLAY as :1 (port 6001).
Click to expand...

Thanks Juha Nurmela - that seems to have done the trick. There was stale lock files in /tmp/. After clearing them and starting the X11 server again, I can now display content on my laptop, from my workstation.

Still not sure why my workstation's Xorg automatically listens for port 6000, but as others suggested, maybe it is because it is an older version that had it as a default setting. No worries though, at least I got my laptop Xorg working correctly now.

Many thanks to everybody that helped with this.
 
graemeg said:
maybe it is because it is an older version that had it as a default setting.
Click to expand...
Yep. That's it. The -nolisten tcp is default option starting from 1.17. You should consider updating your system by the way. Given your Xorg server version, you haven't done it for a while.
 
graemeg said:
Still not sure why my workstation's Xorg automatically listens for port 6000, but as others suggested, maybe it is because it is an older version that had it as a default setting.
Click to expand...
Correct, Xserver 1.16 and older were automatically configured by default to listen on TCP port 6000(-listen tcp). This changed in version 1.17 (-nolisten tcp)
 
hukadan said:
You should consider updating your system by the way. Given your Xorg server version, you haven't done it for a while.
Click to expand...
Indeed, looking at the date of the build I see what you mean. I try and practice the philosophy of "if it ain't broken, don't "fix" it". ;) Plus I really haven't master updating all installed ports packages - I'll need to read the handbook some more. I use this workstation daily, and can't afford it to go down for a day.
 
Reboot clears the locks, unless rcvar clear_tmp_X has been overridden.

There is an example in xauth(1) how to shuffle authorization cookies around with ssh.
If it goes wrong, the error message is friendly No protocol specified. :)

Juha
 
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