Obtaining exceed display number

[David Backeberg]

You may have already solved this, but....

You probably shouldn't use Exceed this way. If you're running any X server 
over a network in the clear, you're risking interception of everything you 
do.

Instead, you should use ssh to broker the connection, and YES, exceed can
handle this. In this mode of operating, you first start exceed, which 
just sits listening for an X connection. Next you fire up your ssh 
client and invoke a command that requires X, like xeyes to test that 
everything is working. There are a number of Windows ssh clients that 
handle the port forwarding for exceed, including SecureCRT. In the case of 
SecureCRT, I think this preference is enabled out of the box. For other 
clients, you may have to toggle "X forwarding" or a similar setting in the 
preferences.

Alternatively, an X server like XWin32 has built-in ssh, where you 
right-click on the systray icon and you can pick a session from a pop-up 
menu.

Aside from this method being secure, you also get the benefit that ssh and 
the X server auto-broker the display details, and you never have to worry 
about those things again, which IMHO, is the way things should be.

AND: of course, if you can use attach directly to this windows box with no 
firewalls in the way, you could always use your favorite ssh hack to have 
ssh listen on a port of your choice and forward traffic to the ssh port on 
the server you _really_ wanted to attach to in the first place, thereby 
avoiding all the sillyness with a Windows X Server. Then you would ssh to 
the arbitrary port on the Windows box and everything would behave as if 
you could ssh to the real server directly.

-- 
David Backeberg (dave at math.mit.edu)
Network Staff Assistant
MIT Math Dept.
Rm. 2-332            (617) 253-4995

On Tue, 24 May 2005, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> I'm currently logging into a Linux server through a Citrix system then using
> exceed to run various X processes.
> To set up my display, I need to know the host name from whence I cam. This
> can easily be obtained from the 'who -m' command.
> But, before I can set the DISPLAY variable, I need to the display number.
> Exceed displays this in an icon. I am wondering if anyone might know a way
> that I can get at this number programatically from the Linux system in that
> network.
>
> The worst case is that I query for it when I log in.
>
>