X11 client server, remote desktop, 10gbE, and weird FF shit

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2009, ted leslie wrote:

> I however was massively confused by running firefox on the remote 
> machine, it started firefox, but it was the firefox (binary) on my local 
> machine, so naturally i figured i got kicked out of the box and was 
> really running it on my local machine, nope, .. i run firefox on the 
> remote machine (over X), and it starts my local one!! i killed the local 
> instance of the FF, and re-tried, and it then brought up the FF running 
> from the remote (but displaying local) as expected. this is weird!! i 
> guess the WM on the local somehow intercepts, and .... ?? anyone know?

Read through the FF startup scripts, it is in there.  X gives us this 
amazing capability (network transparency) and the Mozilla team went out of 
their way to prevent it working for Firefox apparently to prevent someone 
accidentally starting firefox on the wrong box.  Bizarre.  They have been 
doing this for years.

It seems you can now set en environment variable to tell FF to act 
rationally:

MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1

> anyways, what i would like feed back on is ....

> does anyone have any knowledge about stuff that doesn't work well over a 
> x-remote session? i can probably figure out the firefox issue ... but i

In 15 years I've only come across 2 apps that didn't allow for remote 
display under X:

1) A game ported from Mac OS-8 or OS-9.  Whoever ported it didn't 
understand how X was supposed to work and forced the use of shared memory.

2) tvtime, a TV app.  The developer is on record as saying he can't see 
why anyone would want to display it remotely.  I discovered this while 
trying to display it remotely.  Go figure :)   xawtv and friends work just 
fine remotely.

> So any feed back on failed X-remote stories would be valuable. Before I 
> drop coin on a 10gbE set up. (all though i eventually will for the 
> NAS/SAN ability, but would do it sooner, if it rocks as a x server 
> environment).

You could channel bond gigE cards for a fraction of the price.  Maybe 
worth doing this to see if everything works the way you want.  Then when 
you are sure it does you can lay out the cash for the 10GE.

> Does a popularity/cheapness of 10gbE sort of kill the whole "wireless" 
> thing, and get us all back to wired in the home, with cable drops around 
> the house? no 20000mbs wireless on the horizon i am guessing? or would 
> that just be a microwave oven? :)

10GE won't kill wireless any more than wireless would kill wired LANs 
(another often heard claim).  Each has advantages over the other.   I 
predict more of the same: most ppl will stick with WiFi as it is easy and 
cheap, while a few will roll out cables in their home.

> oh , and assuming the x server env. is viable for most anything, there 
> is just one nasty problem that will remain, copy/cut/paste across all 
> the systems????, i wonder what there is out there to allow that? some

You can cut-n-paste between X apps connected to the same X-server 
regardless of whether they are local or remote.  I do it every day.

I highly recommend the use of ssh-agent.  This will make your access to 
all your boxes transparent and allow you to start X apps remotely just as 
easily as locally (no password or passphrase to enter).  This is how I run 
my systems and I've been known to occassionally forget which box was 
actually running a given app.

Cheers,

Rob

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I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy
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