Running X11 Server on Mac OS X - and connecting from a remote machine

Running X11 Server on Mac OS X - and connecting from a remote machine Originally asked on SO - transfer to SU suggested on SO, but transfer made manually.
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 337

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Guest [Entry]

"X11 itself is not a very secure protocol.

You should use X11 forwarding with SSH. This will encrypt the connection and provide better security.

First, enable the ssh daemon on your Solaris system. Solaris 10 should come with SSH preinstalled. See if the process is running with ps -ef | grep ssh

On your MacBook Pro, run Terminal.app, then use ssh -X xclient.subdom2.example.com to connect to the Solaris system and start an X11 tunnel. You can launch X11 programs from the Solaris system and they will start on the MacBook under X11 automatically.

To do X11 forwarding on your Windows system, you'll need two programs. Xming which is a lightweight X11 server, originally from Cygwin, and puTTY, an SSH terminal program for Windows. You'll need to enable X11 forwarding in puTTY.

For better performance, you'll want to enable compression. This is done with the ssh program on OS X using the -c option (ssh -cX), or in puTTY on the SSH Panel (section 4.18.3 enable compression)."