Xnest frustration

[taiji_jian]

Am I the ONLY ONE who cares that XNEST has been HORRIBLY HORRIBLY BROKEN for something like THREE major Ubuntu releases? I have three headless servers on my network that I have been accustomed to administering remotely via XDMCP. They are of widely varying ages and capabilities, and I USED TO connect to them from a similar variety of machines.

I've posted about this. I've googled obsessively about this. I've even filed a couple of bugs. NOTHING.

NYRRRGH. Is everyone else just using the command line and ssh to maintain their headless boxes, or what?

[jpkotta]

You could use vnc instead. Use this to connect to a remote X server.


#!/bin/bash

usage="$0 [user@]remote_host [<DISPLAY>]"

login="$1"
if [ -z "$login" ] ; then
echo $usage
exit 1
fi

disp="$2"
if [ -z "$disp" ] ; then
disp=:0
fi

ssh "$login" "x11vnc -localhost -display '$disp' -scale 4/5 -bg"
vncviewer -via "$login" localhost"$disp"

You could also use X11 forwarding if it's just a few graphical apps you want.

ssh -X user@remote xlogo

[krunge]

Am I the ONLY ONE who cares that XNEST has been HORRIBLY HORRIBLY BROKEN for something like THREE major Ubuntu releases? I have three headless servers on my network that I have been accustomed to administering remotely via XDMCP. They are of widely varying ages and capabilities, and I USED TO connect to them from a similar variety of machines.

I've posted about this. I've googled obsessively about this. I've even filed a couple of bugs. NOTHING.


Yes, I think I see the problem you are having (you didn't give any details, BTW). When I run Xnest like this:


Xnest :2 -geometry 1024x768 -query hostname

It gives me an xdmcp session on 'hostname'. It worked fine on my workstation, but when I tried it on a Ubuntu 8.10 box it came up OK, but was somehow missing expose events or something and so the apps/windows inside the Xnest were not repainting themselves. Is this what you are seeing?

I had to do a full refresh inside the Xnest session to force the windows to repaint. I also tested it with twm as the window manager so it is not a desktop bug.

I'm not sure what you can try next, except going back to an older Xnest binary.

[Jack Waugh]

I can't even get Xnest to work locally. Not only does it fail to refresh, but it doesn't pass arrow keys through when I type them. It passes printable characters, however.

[krunge]

I can't even get Xnest to work locally. Not only does it fail to refresh, but it doesn't pass arrow keys through when I type them. It passes printable characters, however.
Isn't Xephyr an Xnest replacement? Perhaps it is maintained and still works...